“Where are you going to?” he called, roughly.

She answered, “Home!” and watched him intensely.  He made a striding, clumsy leap on to another boulder, and stopped again, balancing himself, then said—­

“Ha! ha!  Well, I am going with you.  It’s the least I can do.  Ha! ha! ha!”

She stared at him till her eyes seemed to become glowing coals that burned deep into her brain, and yet she was in mortal fear of making out the well-known features.  Below her the sea lapped softly against the rock with a splash continuous and gentle.

The man said, advancing another step—­

“I am coming for you.  What do you think?”

She trembled.  Coming for her!  There was no escape, no peace, no hope.  She looked round despairingly.  Suddenly the whole shadowy coast, the blurred islets, the heaven itself, swayed about twice, then came to a rest.  She closed her eyes and shouted—­

“Can’t you wait till I am dead!”

She was shaken by a furious hate for that shade that pursued her in this world, unappeased even by death in its longing for an heir that would be like other people’s children.

“Hey!  What?” said Millot, keeping his distance prudently.  He was saying to himself:  “Look out!  Some lunatic.  An accident happens soon.”

She went on, wildly—­

“I want to live.  To live alone—­for a week—­for a day.  I must explain to them. . . .  I would tear you to pieces, I would kill you twenty times over rather than let you touch me while I live.  How many times must I kill you—­you blasphemer!  Satan sends you here.  I am damned too!”

“Come,” said Millot, alarmed and conciliating.  “I am perfectly alive! . . .  Oh, my God!”

She had screamed, “Alive!” and at once vanished before his eyes, as if the islet itself had swerved aside from under her feet.  Millot rushed forward, and fell flat with his chin over the edge.  Far below he saw the water whitened by her struggles, and heard one shrill cry for help that seemed to dart upwards along the perpendicular face of the rock, and soar past, straight into the high and impassive heaven.

Madame Levaille sat, dry-eyed, on the short grass of the hill side, with her thick legs stretched out, and her old feet turned up in their black cloth shoes.  Her clogs stood near by, and further off the umbrella lay on the withered sward like a weapon dropped from the grasp of a vanquished warrior.  The Marquis of Chavanes, on horseback, one gloved hand on thigh, looked down at her as she got up laboriously, with groans.  On the narrow track of the seaweed-carts four men were carrying inland Susan’s body on a hand-barrow, while several others straggled listlessly behind.  Madame Levaille looked after the procession.  “Yes, Monsieur le Marquis,” she said dispassionately, in her usual calm tone of a reasonable old woman.  “There are unfortunate people on this earth.  I had only one child.  Only one!  And they won’t bury her in consecrated ground!”