d peering at her
daughter, repeated three times: "What do you say? What do you say? What
do you say?"

Susan sat dry-eyed and stony before Madame Levaille, who contemplated
her, feeling a strange sense of inexplicable horror creep into the
silence of the house. She had hardly realised the news, further than to
understand that she had been brought in one short moment face to face
with something unexpected and final. It did not even occur to her to ask
for any explanation. She thought: accident--terrible accident--blood to
the head--fell down a trap door in the loft. . . . She remained there,
distracted and mute, blinking her old eyes.

Suddenly, Susan said--

"I have killed him."

For a moment the mother stood still, almost unbreathing, but with
composed face. The next second she burst out into a shout--

"You miserable madwoman . . . they will cut your neck. . . ."

She fancied the gendarmes entering the house, saying to her: "We want
your daughter; give her up:" the gendarmes with the severe, hard faces
of men on duty. She knew the brigadier well--an old friend, familiar
and respectful, saying heartily, "To your good health, Madame!" before
lifting to his lips the small glass of cognac--out of the special bottle
she kept for friends. And now! . . . She was losing her head. She rushed
here and there, as if looking for something urgently needed--gave that
up, stood stock still in the middle of the room, and screamed at her
daughter--

"Why? Say! Say! Why?"

The other seemed to leap out of her strange apathy.

"Do you think I am made of stone?" she shouted back, striding towards
her mother.

"No! It's impossible . . ." said Madame Levaille, in a convinced tone.

"You go and see, mother," retorted Susan, looking at her with blazing
eyes. "There's no money in heaven--no justice. No! . . . I did not know.
. . . Do you think I have no heart? Do you think I have never heard
people jeering at me, pitying me, wondering at me? Do you know how some
of them were calling me? The mother of idiots--that was my nickname!
And my children never would know me, never speak to me. They would know
nothing; neither men--nor God. Haven't I prayed! But the Mother of God
herself would not hear me. A mother! . . . Who is accursed--I, or the
man who is dead? Eh? Tell me. I took care of myself. Do you think I
would defy the anger of God and have my house full of those things--that
are worse than animals who know the hand that feeds th