“But, for all that, I do,” said Gardel, steadily. He took her outburst quite coolly--answered her with gaiety even. I cried “_Malepeste!_” under my breath. And, indeed, my amazement was justified. For who would have dreamed that this little colourless draggle-tail had one sentiment in her that amounted to a conviction? Madame Placide an atheist! And what was there of dark and secret in her past history that drove her to this desire of extinction? At Gardel’s answer she fell back in her chair with defiant eyes and again that little artificial laugh. In the noisy talk of the room we four sat and spoke apart. “_Malappris!_” she said. “You shall justify yourself of that boldness. Come back to me, if you go first, and I will believe.” “Agreed!” he cried. “And for the sign, madame?” She thought; and answered, with the grateful womanliness that redeemed her,-- “Do me a little service--something, anything--and I shall know it is you.” The candles were burned half-way down in their bottles. He rose and one by one blew them out. “_Voilà!_” he cried gaily. “To save your pocket!” So the little scene ended. “M. Gardel,” I said to him presently, “you come (you will pardon me) of the makers of the Revolution. I am curious to learn your experience of the premonitory symptoms of that disease to which at last you have fallen a victim.” “Monsieur! ‘A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse.’ It is an early remembrance with me how my father cursed me that I passed my eighth year, and so was liable to the salt-tax. My faith! I do not blame him. Things were hard enough. But it was unreasonable to beat me because I could not stop the march of Time. Yet we had not then learned to worship Reason.” “The Moloch that devours her children!” “So it appears. But there were signs and omens for long years before. I am of the territory of Berri, monsieur; and there all we learned to read was between the lines. I will tell you that I heard--for I was in service at the time” (he bowed with infinite complaisance to his Marquise)--“how, all during the chill, dark spring that preceded the September Massacres, _Les laveuses de la nuit_ were busy at their washing.” “And who are they, my friend?” “Strange, inhuman women, monsieur, who wash in the moonlight by lonely tarns. And while they wash they wail.” “Wash? But what?” “Some say the winding-sheets of those who are to die during the year.” La Marquise broke into shrill laughter. “Poor, poor imbecile!” she cried. “Thy credulity would make but one gulp of a gravestone. You must know these things are not, my friend. I tell thee so--I, thy mistress. Miserable! have you nothing in your life that not mountains of eternity could crush out the memory of?” Again she checked herself. “It is the one virtue of the Revolution to have decreed annihilation.” A deputation approached us. She jumped to her feet, her pale eyes flickering.