Then she opened her eyes, and on recognizing the man who was bending over her, she was seized with terror.  Sobbing with shame, she drew the bed-cover over her bosom.  It seemed as though she had grown older by ten years during her short agony, and on the brink of death had attained sufficient womanhood to understand that this man, above all others, must not lay hands on her.  She wailed out again in piteous entreaty:  “Mamma! mamma!  I beseech you!”

Helene, who had hitherto not opened her lips, came close to Henri.  Her eyes were bent on him fixedly; her face was of marble.  She touched him, and merely said in a husky voice:  “Go away!”

Doctor Bodin strove to appease Jeanne, who now shook with a fresh fit of coughing.  He assured her that nobody would annoy her again, that every one would go away, to prevent her being disturbed.

“Go away,” repeated Helene, in a deep whisper in her lover’s ear.  “You see very well that we have killed her!”

Then, unable to find a word in reply, Henri withdrew.  He lingered for a moment longer in the dining-room, awaiting he knew not what, something that might possibly take place.  But seeing that Doctor Bodin did not come out, he groped his way down the stairs without even Rosalie to light him.  He thought of the awful speed with which galloping consumption—­a disease to which he had devoted earnest study—­carried off its victims; the miliary tubercles would rapidly multiply, the stifling sensation would become more and more pronounced; Jeanne would certainly not last another three weeks.

The first of these passed by.  In the mighty expanse of heaven before the window, the sun rose and set above Paris, without Helene being more than vaguely conscious of the pitiless, steady advance of time.  She grasped the fact that her daughter was doomed; she lived plunged in a stupor, alive only to the terrible anguish that filled her heart.  It was but waiting on in hopelessness, in certainty that death would prove merciless.  She could not weep, but paced gently to and fro, tending the sufferer with slow, regulated movements.  At times, yielding to fatigue, she would fall upon a chair, whence she gazed at her for hours.  Jeanne grew weaker and weaker; painful vomiting was followed by exhaustion; the fever never quitted her.  When Doctor Bodin called, he examined her for a little while and left some prescription; but his drooping shoulders, as he left the room, were eloquent of such powerlessness that the mother forbore to accompany him to ask even a question.

On the morning after the illness had declared itself, Abbe Jouve had made all haste to call.  He and his brother now again came every evening, exchanging a mute clasp of the hand with Helene, and never venturing to ask any news.  They had offered to watch by the bedside in succession, but she sent them away when ten o’clock struck; she would have no one in the bedroom during the night.  One evening the Abbe, who had seemed absorbed by some idea since the previous day, took her aside.