Then he stood before the door and listened. A voice which he did not recognize was speaking; he stooped down and peeped in through the keyhole. His eye lighted directly upon the face of an elderly woman who was talking earnestly, but perfectly quietly. He recognized the old singer, his wife's mother, whom he had always disliked even at the time of his maddest infatuation. She sat in a corner of the sofa, and drank now and then, in the short pauses she made, from a little silver cup that stood by the side of a traveling-flask. At the same time she broke up a biscuit and put the pieces in her mouth with an affected movement of the hand, all the while displaying her false teeth to advantage. Near her, sunk back in an arm-chair, lay her daughter; she was dressed entirely in black, which became her white skin and deep blue eyes charmingly. She was playing with a pair of scissors, making them flash in the candle-light, and looked as wearied and indifferent to all about her, as though she had just come home from the theatre where she been acting in some tiresome piece with only tolerable success. Suddenly she sprang up with a loud shriek. The door had opened noiselessly; and, instead of the young companion whom she had expected to see enter, the very man stood before her, from whom she had fled to this obscure hiding-place. The words died on her lips; even the old actress, who was not ordinarily easily disconcerted, sat as if she were petrified; and only her fingers, still convulsively crumbling up the biscuits, seemed to be alive. "Leave the room; I have something to say to my wife!" Jansen said to her in a low voice and without violence. "Do you hear what I say? Go away this instant! but through this door, by which I entered." He wanted to prevent her from taking the child with her, for he took it for granted that it had been put to bed in the adjoining room. The women exchanged a quick look. These few moments sufficed to restore the younger one to self-possession. "You must not leave me," she said. "In whatever I am to hear--since I am conscious of my innocence--I need shun no witnesses, least of all my own mother." And as she spoke she sank back again into the chair, and passed her hand across her eyes, as though overcome by painful memories. The old woman on the sofa did not move. They could only hear how she murmured softly to herself: "Good God! Good God! What a scene! What a catastrophe!" "I repeat my demand!" the sculptor said with emphasis. "Will you wait for me to take your arm and lead you out?" "Very good; I will go; I will not let matters be brought to the worst," cried the mother, rising with a pathetic gesture. Then she bent down over Lucie and whispered something in her ear. "No, no," hastily answered the latter, "not a word to him. That would only make the matter worse. Go, if it must be so. I am not afraid!"