Outside the street was dark. No light trickled through the blinds of the house opposite. No light reached its brilliant electric flare into the sky. No light from the tall lamp-post specked through the gloom. In the dim shadow of the silent street she could see the vague forms of people going to and fro. Blurred figures moving in the darkness with the echo of their footsteps trailing sharply behind them.
She stood quite still. Once her hands crept up to her mouth, the backs of them pressing against her teeth.
She wheeled about at the sound of Jean's voice.
He was standing just within the doorway, the girl at his side. The woman stood there staring. The girl crossed the room quickly and put her arm about the woman's waist, drawing her close.
She said the words carefully and precisely with a tremendous effort for control.
"Mon Jean, you will have courage--; great--courage--my little one, you will be protected. You--will--be--protected!" She had said that in spite of herself.
He came to her then and flung his arms about her and kissed her on either cheek, and held her tightly to him.
"My little rabbit--I wish you luck. My cabbage--au revoir--;" and her lips brushed across his mouth.
For a second he did not move. Then he went across the room and out through the door.
The woman's eyes went to the window. The silent, darkened street. The people there below her. The somber, black lack of light.
"They will watch over him," the woman muttered. "They must watch--out--there. They do come back into the world again to protect. They cannot--cannot leave them in all that horror--alone."
"See, Maman." The girl's quivering face was against the window-pane. "Maman, Jean waves to you!"
Her eyes followed the pointing of the girl's finger.
Her gaze rested on the dim, undefined figure of the boy standing in the street with his hat in the hand that was reached toward them above his head. Mechanically she waved back.
"Oh--petite maman;" she whispered piteously.
There, following after Jean; going through the shadow-saturated street; moving unheeded among the vague figures of the people going to and fro. Something was there. Some scant movement like a current too quiet to see. A shadow in the shadows that her sight could not hold to. In the dark, gloom-soaked street, staying close to her Jean, she could feel something. Some one was there.