So I said to her, 'Where was your home?' And now, what do you
think she answered, m'sieu'?' 'Look there,' she said to me, with her big
eyes standing out of her head almost--for that's what comes to her
sometimes when she is in pain, and she looks more handsome then than at
any other time--'Look there,' she said to me, 'it was in heaven, that's
where--my home was; but I didn't know it. I hadn't been taught to know
the place when I saw it.'
"Well, I felt my skin go goosey, for I saw what was going on in her mind,
and how she was remembering what had happened to her some time,
somewhere; but there wasn't a tear in her eyes, and I never saw her
cry-never once, m'sieu'--well, but as brave as brave. Her eyes are always
dry--burning. They're like two furnaces scorching up her face. So I never
found out her history, and she won't have the priest. I believe that's
because she wants to die unknown, and doesn't want to confess. I never
saw a woman I was sorrier for, though I think she wasn't married to the
man that left her. But whatever she was, there's good in her--I haven't
known hundreds of women and had seven sisters for nothing. Well, there
she is--not a friend near her at the last; for it's coming soon, the
end--no one to speak to her, except the woman she pays to come in and
look after her and nurse her a bit. Of course there's the landlady too,
Madame Popincourt, a kind enough little cricket of a woman, but with no
sense and no head for business.
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