"If it is Louison!" And emitting an "Ah!" that had in it the note of murder, she passed out of the window. The night was filled with fog, out of which descended the sharp sting of rain. She moved slowly, her body pressed to the roof, seeing with her fingers until the dormer-window struck against her foot. Once into Louison's room, she crept to the bed, stretching out her hand. It was empty. "Oh! oh! oh!" The cry was of something collapsing in her soul. Without returning to her room, she sped down the stairs, through the two courts, and into the street. In her unheeding rush, she turned to the right, missing Barabant, who was at the moment returning from the opposite direction. When she could run no longer, she dropped into a walk until, recovering her breath, she broke again into a run. At the street corners the bracketed lanterns suffused the fog with a floating radiance that guided her over the glistening, slippery stones. The mist that threatened the world with a destiny of gloom, the rain that gathered on her eyelashes and weighted her hair, she welcomed as the fitting touch to her misery; but the chill abated not a jot of the fever in her veins. Out of the blurred night occasionally long lines of watchers emerged, crouching under shawls, hugging the walls to escape the rain. A dozen brutish arms snatched at her, but eluding all, she arrived, panting and trembling, at her destination, crying to the servant who answered her knock: "Citoyenne, is this the Committee of Safety?" "Yes." "I must see them." "Do you come to denounce some one?" "I do." "Enter." Nicole found herself in a hall. "Name, citoyenne?" "The Citoyenne Nicole, bouquetière. The Citoyen Couthon will know me." The servant passed to a door at the back and knocked timidly. At the second repetition a voice cried: "Come in." The door opened on a group of men about a table littered with papers. "What is it?" "A citoyenne who wishes to make a denunciation." "Name?" "The Citoyenne Nicole, bouquetière." "Tiens! I know her," exclaimed a voice. The spokesman, on this evidence, gave a sign of permission to the servant, who ushered in Nicole. A voice said approvingly: "Look--she is pretty." "Haven't the time." Several, attracted by the exclamation, gave her a casual glance; the rest, without raising their heads, continued the low hum of their conference. From the farther side a man wrapped in blankets, deformed, infirm, seized with sudden chills, greeted her. "Well, Nicole, you've come to denounce some one? That's right." "Citoyen Couthon," Nicole blurted, "I--" At the aspect of these machine-like men industriously busy with the lists that fed the guillotine, all her anger dissolved--she could not pronounce there the name she had loved. "Well, well," Couthon said encouragingly, "you want to denounce whom? Come, let us get at it. Not the Citoyen Eugène Barabant, at least," he said, with a good-natured leer.