Madame Depine left the bureau and wandered about in a daze. That
monster of ingratitude! That arch-adventuress, more vicious even than
her bejewelled sister! All the long months of more than Lenten
rigour recurred to her self-pitiful mood, that futile half-year of
semi-starvation. How Madame Valiere must have gorged on the sly, the
rich eccentric! She crossed a bridge to the Ile de la Cite, and came
to the gargoyled portals of Notre Dame, and let herself be drawn
through the open door, and all the gloom and glory of the building
fell around her like a soothing caress. She dropped before an altar
and poured out her grief to the Mother of Sorrows. At last she arose,
and tottered up the aisle, and the great rose-window glowed like
the window of heaven. She imagined her husband and the dead children
looking through it. Probably they wondered, as they gazed down, why
her head remained so young.
Ah! but she was old, so very old. Surely God would take her soon. How
should she endure the long years of loneliness and social ignominy?
As she stumbled out of the Cathedral, the cold, hard day smote her
full in the face. People stared at her, and she knew it was at the
brown wig. But could they expect her to starve herself for a whole
year?
"_Mon Dieu!_ Starve yourselves, my good friends. At my age, one needs
fuel."
She escaped from them, and ran, muttering, across the road, and almost
into the low grey shed.
Ah! the Morgue! Blessed idea! That should be the end of her. A
moment's struggle, and then--the rose-window of heaven! Hell? No, no;
the Madonna would plead for her; she who always looked so beautiful,
so _convenable_.
She would peep in. Let her see how she would look when they found her.
Would they clap a grey wig upon her, or expose her humiliation even in
death?
"A-a-a-h!" A long scream tore her lips apart. There, behind the glass,
in terrible waxen peace, a gash on her forehead, lay the "Princess,"
so uncanny-looking without any wig at all, that she would not
have recognised her but for that moment of measurement at the
hairdresser's. She fell sobbing before the cold glass wall of the
death-chamber. Ah, God! Her first fear had been right; her brooch had
but added to the murderer's temptation. And she had just traduced this
martyred saint to the police.
"Forgive me, _ma cherie_, forgive me," she moaned, not even conscious
that the attendant was lifting her to her feet with professional
interest.
For in that instant everything passed from her but the great yearning
for love and reconciliation, and for the first time a grey wig seemed
a petty and futile aspiration.
* * * * *