Matrena only shook her old, old head.

“No, no, she has not heard me.  I was there like a shadow, like a shadow of myself.  She will never hear me.  No one hears a shadow.”

Rouletabille felt returning pity for her and spoke more gently.

“In any case, it is necessary, you must understand, that she should attach no more importance to what you have done to-night than to the things she knows of your doing other nights.  It is not the first time, is it, that you have wandered in the sitting-room?  You understand me?  And to-morrow, madame, embrace her as you always have.”

“No, not that,” she moaned.  “Never that.  I could not.”

“Why not?”

Matrena did not reply.  She wept.  He took her in his arms like a child consoling its mother.

“Don’t cry.  Don’t cry.  All is not lost.  Someone did leave the villa this morning.”

“Oh, little domovoi!  How is that?  How is that?  How did you find that out?”

“Since we didn’t find anything inside, it was certainly necessary to find something outside.”

“And you have found it?”

“Certainly.”

“The Virgin protect you!”

“She is with us.  She will not desert us.  I will even say that I believe she has a special guardianship over the Isles.  She watches over them from evening to morning.”

“What are you saying?”

“Certainly.  You don’t know what we call in France ’the watchers of the Virgin’?”

“Oh, yes, they are the webs that the dear little beasts of the good God spin between the trees and that...”

“Exactly.  You understand me and you will understand further when you know that in the garden the first thing that struck me across the face as I went into it was these watchers of the Virgin spun by the dear little spiders of the good God.  At first when I felt them on my face I said to myself, ‘Hold on, no one has passed this way,’ and so I went to search other places.  The webs stopped me everywhere in the garden.  But, outside the garden, they kept out of the way and let me pass undisturbed down a pathway which led to the Neva.  So then I said to myself, ’Now, has the Virgin by accident overlooked her work in this pathway?  Surely not.  Someone has ruined it.’  I found the shreds of them hanging to the bushes, and so I reached the river.”

“And you threw yourself into the river, my dear angel.  You swim like a little god.”

“And I landed where the other landed.  Yes, there were the reeds all freshly broken.  And I slipped in among the bushes.”

“Where to?”

“Up to the Villa Krestowsky, madame — where they both live.”

“Ah, it was from there someone came?”

There was a silence between them.

She questioned: 

“Boris?”

“Someone who came from the villa and who returned there.  Boris or
Michael, or another.  They went and returned through the reeds. 
But in coming they used a boat; they returned by swimming.”