Some large drops came down, one by one, at first. Then the water poured from the sky, as it does from a vase that has been upset. The storm broke over Morimond and the thunder rolled and burst in peals. The country round was all fire and then all dark. And at every moment in the gloomy room, lighted up with pale gleams, the flashes would suddenly cover the reclining figure of the invalid from head to foot, throwing over her whole body a shroud of light. There was one last peal of thunder, so loud and which burst so near, that Renee threw her arms round her father's neck and hid her face against him. "Foolish child, it's over now," said M. Mauperin; and like a bird which lifts its head a little from under its wing, she looked up, keeping her arms round him. "Ah, I thought we were all dead!" she said, with a smile in which there was something of a regret. LX One morning on going to see Renee, who had had a bad night, M. Mauperin found her in a doze. At the sound of his footstep she half opened her eyes and turned slightly towards him. "Oh, it's you, papa," she said, and then she murmured something vaguely, of which M. Mauperin only caught the word "journey." "What are you saying about a journey?" he asked. "Yes, it's as though I had just come back from far away--from very far away--from countries I can't remember." And opening her eyes wide, with her two hands flat out on the sheet, she seemed to be trying to recall where she had been, and from whence she had just come. A confused recollection, an indistinct memory remained to her of stretches and spaces of country, of vague places, of those worlds and limbos to which sick people go during those last nights which are detaching them from earth, and from whence they return, surprised, with the dizziness and stupor of the Infinite still upon them, as if in the dream they have forgotten they had heard the first flapping of the wings of Death. "Oh, it's nothing," she said after a minute's silence, "it's just the effect of the opium--they gave me some last night to make me sleep." And moving as though to shake off her thoughts, she said to her father, "Hold the little glass for me, will you, so that I can make myself look nice? Higher up--oh, these men--how awkward they are, to be sure." She put her thin hands through her hair to fluff it up and pulled her lace into its place again. "There now," she said, "talk to me. I want to be talked to," and she half closed her eyes while her father talked. "You are tired, Renee; I'll leave you," said M. Mauperin, seeing that she did not appear to be listening. "No, I have a touch of pain. Talk to me, though; it makes me forget it." "But you are not listening to me. Come now, what are you thinking about, my dear little girl?" "I'm not thinking about anything. I was trying to remember. Dreams, you know--it isn't really like that--it was--I don't remember. Ah!" She broke off suddenly, with a pang of sharp pain. "Does it hurt you, Renee?"