groping and doubting. And,
thereupon, leaving Denis to settle everything down below, he decided to
see Constance.

Up above, however, when Mathieu was on the point of turning into the
communicating passage, he paused once more, this time near the lift.
It was there, fourteen years previously, that Morange, finding the trap
open, had gone down to warn and chide the workmen, while Constance,
according to her own account, had quietly returned into the house,
at the very moment when Blaise, coming from the other end of the dim
gallery, plunged into the gulf. Everybody had eventually accepted
that narrative as being accurate, but Mathieu now felt that it was
mendacious. He could recall various glances, various words, various
spells of silence; and sudden certainty came upon him, a certainty based
on all the petty things which he had not then understood, but which
now assumed the most frightful significance. Yes, it was certain, even
though round it there hovered the monstrous vagueness of silent crimes,
cowardly crimes, over which a shadow of horrible mystery always lurks.
Moreover, it explained the sequel, those two bodies lying below, as far,
that is, as logical reasoning can explain a madman's action with all its
gaps and mysteriousness. Nevertheless, Mathieu still strove to doubt;
before anything else he wished to see Constance.

Showing a waxy pallor, she had remained erect, motionless, in the middle
of her little drawing-room. The waiting of fourteen years previously had
begun once more, lasting on and on, and filling her with such anxiety
that she held her breath the better to listen. Nothing, no stir, no
sound of footsteps, had yet ascended from the works. What could be
happening then? Was the hateful thing, the dreaded thing, merely a
nightmare after all? Yet Morange had really sneered in her face, she had
fully understood him. Had not a howl, the thud of a fall, just reached
her ears? And now, had not the rumbling of the machinery ceased? It was
death, the factory silent, chilled and lost for her. All at once her
heart ceased beating as she detected a sound of footsteps drawing nearer
and nearer with increased rapidity. The door opened, and it was Mathieu
who came in.

She recoiled, livid, as at the sight of a ghost. He, O God! Why he? How
was it he was there? Of all the messengers of misfortune he was the one
whom she had least expected. Had the dead son risen before her she would
not have shuddered more dreadf