When Gypo’s eyes found her through the fog, she was hidden to the chin beneath a pile of blankets and clothes of all sorts, up against the wall. She lay on her side, with her white, shrivelled head ensconced in a grey pillow, that had no case to cover it. The feathers protruded from the pillow. The old woman’s white hair was strewn about the pillow and the bed-clothes, like strands of seaweed floating on the surface of a shallow sea at low tide. Her mouth was wide open, in an ogreish fashion, displaying red gums and four yellow teeth, cropping up at unequal distances along her jaws; four, crooked, yellow fangs. Her eyes alone showed life and intelligence. They were small, fierce, blue eyes, blazing with cunning and avarice. Her body, hidden beneath the clothes, resembled a mountain that had been reduced to a shapeless pulp by concussion. Gypo surveyed her without any emotion. Then he looked around for Katie. He saw her standing in the corner behind the door. She was still dressed as he had met her in the public-house early in the evening. But her dress had become dishevelled. Her face had changed. It had changed in a strange manner. It had lost the careworn, pinched expression. Her eyes were no longer tired. Her face was flushed and full. The skin was loose. The mouth was firm, with a voluptuous softness in the lips. Her eyes flashed bright. They had the calm aggressiveness of healthy, energetic women, who are passing from one success to another, the calm, aggressive flash of satisfied desire and of vaulting ambition. While, in spite of all that, her hands, clutching her throat, trembled in apparent terror, in contradiction to the repose and vitality of her face. Her feet, too, danced spasmodically. “What’s the matter with ye, Katie?” said Gypo. “What’s that ye were sayin’ about me ghost?” He spoke in a hoarse, morose whisper. “God!” exclaimed Katie. She took her hands away from her throat and clasped them behind her back, with the movement of one offered an objectionable thing. Then she fled to the fire at great speed. She leaned her back against the wall to the right of the fireplace and gaped at Gypo. She motioned to him with her head. “Shut that door,” she said in a whisper. “Shut the door and come in.” Gypo turned to the door silently and began to tie the two pieces of broken string to fasten it once more. “Where have ye ben?” she whispered. “O, Lord! Ye put the heart crosswise in me.” Gypo tied the door and stalked slowly and quietly to the hearth. He stood still, glanced towards the old woman and then looked with open lips at Katie. “They’re after me, Katie,” he muttered with a shudder. There was a silence. Gypo shuddered again and sat down in front of the fire. He sat on the floor, with his elbows resting on his knees, stretching out his hands to the blaze.