At her father’s first words, she felt as if she were hurled into a deep, ice-cold abyss, filled with darkness, into which she plunged swiftly, helplessly, well knowing that she would never return to the light.  She was suffocating.  She would have liked to resist, to struggle, to call for help.

Who was there who had the power to sustain her in that great disaster?

God?  The thing that is called Heaven?

She did not even think of that.  In Paris, especially in the quarters where the working class live, the houses are too high, the streets too narrow, the air too murky for heaven to be seen.

It was Death alone at which the little cripple was gazing so earnestly.  Her course was determined upon at once:  she must die.  But how?

Sitting motionless in her easy-chair, she considered what manner of death she should choose.  As she was almost never alone, she could not think of the brazier of charcoal, to be lighted after closing the doors and windows.  As she never went out she could not think either of poison to be purchased at the druggist’s, a little package of white powder to be buried in the depths of the pocket, with the needle-case and the thimble.  There was the phosphorus on the matches, too, the verdigris on old sous, the open window with the paved street below; but the thought of forcing upon her parents the ghastly spectacle of a self-inflicted death-agony, the thought that what would remain of her, picked up amid a crowd of people, would be so frightful to look upon, made her reject that method.

She still had the river.  At all events, the water carries you away somewhere, so that nobody finds you and your death is shrouded in mystery.

The river!  She shuddered at the mere thought.  But it was not the vision of the deep, black water that terrified her.  The girls of Paris laugh at that.  You throw your apron over your head so that you can’t see, and pouf!  But she must go downstairs, into the street, all alone, and the street frightened her.

Yes, it was a terrible thing to go out into the street alone.  She must wait until the gas was out, steal softly downstairs when her mother had gone to bed, pull the cord of the gate, and make her way across Paris, where you meet men who stare impertinently into your face, and pass brilliantly lighted cafes.  The river was a long distance away.  She would be very tired.  However, there was no other way than that.

“I am going to bed, my child; are you going to sit up any longer?”

With her eyes on her work, “my child” replied that she was.  She wished to finish her dozen.

“Good-night, then,” said Mamma Delobelle, her enfeebled sight being unable to endure the light longer.  “I have put father’s supper by the fire.  Just look at it before you go to bed.”

Desire did not lie.  She really intended to finish her dozen, so that her father could take them to the shop in the morning; and really, to see that tranquil little head bending forward in the white light of the lamp, one would never have imagined all the sinister thoughts with which it was thronged.