eet 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.

At last she takes up the last bird of the dozen, a marvellously lovely
little bird whose wings seem to have been dipped in sea-water, all green
as they are with a tinge of sapphire.

Carefully, daintily, Desiree suspends it on a piece of brass wire, in
the charming attitude of a frightened creature about to fly away.

Ah! how true it is that the little blue bird is about to fly away! What
a desperate flight into space! How certain one feels that this time it
is the great journey, the everlasting journey from which there is no
return!

By and by, very softly, Desiree opens the wardrobe and takes a thin
shawl which she throws over her shoulders; then she goes. What? Not a
glance at her mother, not a silent farewell, not a tear? No, nothing!
With the terrible clearness of vision of those who are about to die, she
suddenly realizes that her childhood and youth have been sacrificed to
a vast self-love. She feels very sure that a word from their great man
will comfort that sleeping mother, with whom she is almost angry for not
waking, for allowing her to go without a quiver of her closed eyelids.

When one dies young, even by one's own act, it is never without a
rebellious feeling, and poor Desiree bids adieu to life, indignant with
destiny.

Now she is in the street. Where is she going? Everything seems deserted
already. Desiree walks rapidly, wrapped