irelessly they
grope along a wall, day in, day out, and then suddenly a great gate
swings open, as though to the touch of a spring, and the whole way is
clear to the goal.

Jean Jacques went on thinking in a strange, new, intense abstraction.
His restless eyes were steadier than they had ever been; his wife
noticed that as he entered the house after the Revelation. She
noticed also his paleness and his abstraction. For an instant she was
frightened; but no, Jean Jacques could not know anything. Yet--yet he
had come from the direction of the river!

"What is it, Jean Jacques?" she asked. "Aren't you well?"

He put his hand to his head, but did not look her in the eyes. His
gesture helped him to avoid that. "I have a head--la, such a head! I
have been thinking, thinking-it is my hobby. I have been planning the
cheese-factory, and all at once it comes on-the ache in my head. I
will go to bed. Yes, I will go at once." Suddenly he turned at the door
leading to the bedroom. "The little Zoe--is she well?"

"Of course. Why should she not be well? She has gone to the top of the
hill. Of course, she's well, Jean Jacques."

"Good-good!" he remarked. Somehow it seemed strange to him that Zoe
should be well. Was there not a terrible sickness in his house, and
had not that woman, his wife, her mother, brought the infection? Was he
himself not stricken by it?

Carmen was calm enough again. "Go to bed, Jean Jacques," she said, "and
I'll bring you a sleeping posset. I know those headaches. You had one
when the ash-factory was burned."

He nodded without looking at her, and closed the door behind him.

When she came to the bedroom a half-hour later, his face was turned to
the wall. She spoke, but he did not answer. She thought he was asleep.
He was not asleep. He was only thinking how to do the thing which
was not obvious, which was also safe for himself. That should be his
triumph, if he could but achieve it.

When she came to bed he did not stir, and he did not answer her when she
spoke.

"The poor Jean Jacques!" he heard her say, and if there had not been on
him the same courage that possessed him the night when the Antoine was
wrecked, he would have sobbed.

He did not stir. He kept thinking; and all the time her words, "The poor
Jean Jacques!" kept weaving themselves through his vague designs. Why
had she said that--she who had deceived, betrayed him? Had he then seen
what he had seen?

She did not sleep for a long t