s things, to know?
She turned from the window and tiptoed across the little room, and took
the little black velvet turban with its white cockade, that Father
Anton had given her, down from where it hung upon a nail on the wall,
and fastened her cloak tightly about her for fear that it might brush
against something and make a noise, and stole then to the door, and out
into the hallway, and to the front door of the tenement. Yes, she
would go--but no one must know--only herself, and that great figure
with the drum, and--and the _bon Dieu_, who would understand.
And so she went out into the night, and across the city, and to the Rue
Vanitaire, and to Jean's studio; and all the way her heart was beating
quickly, and she was a little frightened, and avoided the people that
she met, for no one must know--and even at the last, when the goal was
reached, and she stood before the house and saw that it was dark in all
the windows, and she had only to enter, there came even then a little
added thrill of fear. The street, she had thought, was deserted, and
suddenly, as she stood there, it--it seemed as though some one hiding
across the street had stepped out of concealment, and as suddenly had
disappeared again. She caught her breath, and stood for a long tense
moment gazing in that direction. And then at last she smiled a little
tremulously. It--it was only a shadow. Yes, she was quite sure now
that it was only a shadow--she could see the flickering of the street
lamp on the wall of the building, where she had thought she had seen
something else. It was very foolish of her to be like this. She had
never been afraid in Bernay-sur-Mer--only everything here was so
strange--and it was very late--and--and she was going into Jean's
studio--and no one must know. And then she mounted the steps very
cautiously, and unlocked the door and closed it softly--and in another
moment, slipping across the hall, past the foot of the stairs that led
to Jean's sleeping apartments above, she had entered the salon and shut
the door behind her.
It was quite dark here, too dark almost to distinguish anything--the
only light was a tiny, truant moonbeam that strayed in from the
_atelier_ between the portieres of the archway. It was in there--the
great figure with the drum! But she would not go there for a moment
yet. It was here, too, that Jean was present in everything about her.
It was here that his friends, those that he cared for now, t
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