song! Who taught it you? Where do you get it from?.. It's a song my mother used to sing, a song of her own country, Savoy.. And I have never heard it since.. since she died.. So I want.. I should like."
She stopped. The Breton woman looked at her in silence, with an air of stupefaction, as though she too were on the point of asking questions. But Véronique repeated:
"Who taught it you?"
"Some one over there," the woman called Honorine answered, at last.
"Over there?"
"Yes, some one on my island."
Véronique said, with a sort of dread:
"Coffin Island?"
"That's just a name they call it by. It's really the Isle of Sarek."
They still stood looking at each other, with a look in which a certain doubt was mingled with a great need of speech and understanding. And at the same time they both felt that they were not enemies.
Véronique was the first to continue:
"Excuse me, but, you see, there are things which are so puzzling."
The Breton woman nodded her head in approval and Véronique continued:
"So puzzling and so disconcerting!.. For instance, do you know why I'm here? I must tell you. Perhaps you alone can explain.. It's like this: an accident – quite a small accident, but really it all began with that – brought me to Brittany for the first time and showed me, on the door of an old, deserted, road-side cabin, the initials which I used to sign when I was a girl, a signature which I have not used for fourteen or fifteen years. As I went on, I discovered the same inscription many times repeated, with each time a different consecutive number. That was how I came here, to the beach at Beg-Meil and to this part of the beach, which appeared to be the end of a journey foreseen and arranged by.. I don't know whom."
"Is your signature here?" asked Honorine, eagerly. "Where?"
"On that stone, above us, at the entrance to the shelter."
"I can't see from here. What are the letters?"
"V. d'H."
The Breton woman suppressed a movement. Her bony face betrayed profound emotion, and, hardly opening her lips, she murmured:
"Véronique.. Véronique d'Hergemont."
"Ah," exclaimed the younger woman, "so you know my name, you know my name!"
Honorine took Véronique's two hands and held them in her own. Her weather-beaten face lit up with a smile. And her eyes grew moist with tears as she repeated:
"Mademoiselle Véronique!.. Madame Véronique!.. So it's you, Véronique!.. O Heaven, is it possible! The Blessed Virgin Mary be praised!"
Véronique felt utterly confounded and kept on saying:
"You know my name.. you know who I am.. Then you can explain all this riddle to me?"
After a long pause, Honorine replied:
"I can explain nothing. I don't understand either. But we can try to find out together.. Tell me, what was the name of that Breton village?"
"Le Faouet."
"Le Faouet. I know. And where was the deserted cabin?"
"A mile and a quarter away."
"Did you look in?"
"Yes; and that was the most terrible thing of all. Inside the cabin was."
"What was in the cabin?"
"First of all, the dead body of a man, an old man, dressed in the local costume, with long white hair and a grey beard.. Oh, I shall never forget that dead man!.. He must have been murdered, poisoned, I don't know what.."
Honorine listened greedily, but the murder seemed to give her no clue and she merely asked:
"Who was it? Did they have an inquest?"
"When I came back with the people from Le Faouet, the corpse had disappeared."
"Disappeared? But who had removed it?"
"I don't know."
"So that you know nothing?"
"Nothing. Except that, the first time, I found in the cabin a drawing.. a drawing which I tore up; but its memory haunts me like a nightmare that keeps on recurring. I can't get it out of my mind.. Listen, it was a roll of paper on which some one had evidently copied an old picture and it represented.. Oh, a dreadful, dreadful thing, four women crucified! And one of the women was myself, with my name.. And the others wore a head-dress like yours."
Honorine had squeezed her hands with incredible violence:
"What's that you say?" she cried. "What's that you say? Four women crucified?"
"Yes; and there was something about thirty coffins, consequently about your island."
The Breton woman put her hands over Véronique's lips to silence them:
"Hush! Hush! Oh, you mustn't speak of all that! No, no, you mustn't.. You see, there are devilish things.. which it's a sacrilege to talk about.. We must be silent about that.. Later on, we'll see.. another year, perhaps.. Later on.. Later on.."
She seemed shaken by terror, as by a gale which scourges the trees and overwhelms all living things. And suddenly she fell on her knees upon the rock and muttered a long prayer, bent in two, with her hands before her face, so completely absorbed that Véronique asked her no more questions.
At last she rose and, presently, said:
"Yes, this is all terrifying, but I don't see that it makes our duty any different or that we can hesitate at all."
And, addressing Véronique, she said, gravely:
"You must come over there with me."
"Over there, to your island?" replied Véronique, without concealing her reluctance.
Honorine again took her hands and continued, still in that same, rather solemn tone which appeared to Véronique to be full of secret and unspoken thoughts:
"Your name is truly Véronique d'Hergemont?"
"Yes."
"Who was your father?"
"Antoine d'Hergemont."
"You married a man called Vorski, who said he was a Pole?"
"Yes, Alexis Vorski."
"You married him after there was a scandal about his running off with you and after a quarrel between you and your father?"
"Yes."
"You had a child by him?"
"Yes, a son, François."
"A son that you never knew, in a manner of speaking, because he was kidnapped by your father?"
"Yes."
