The woman with the white hair had waited.
"There is another here. He is perhaps a little older than the one who died. He has not that one's courage. He is very careful of all the small things; like his clothes and his cigarettes and his affections. The big things he has never known. His eyes are like the eyes of Madame. Madame has this son in the war now."
"No--no!" The great lady leaned across the table. "Don't tell me--not that he--I couldn't bear it! Not--both--of--them!"
The woman with the white hair looked up quite suddenly from her charts of stars and constellations. A pitying quiver shook over her face.
"You need have no fear, Madame. He is not ready. It is a wound. It is not a wound that gives death."
The great lady fingered her pearls again.
"You--you quite carried me away. For a moment you startled me."
"I regret it, Madame. Perhaps I should not have said anything."
"Of course you should have. I told you that when I came in, didn't I? I said I wanted to hear everything. Everything you could tell me."
"Is that all, now? You're certain that you've not forgotten anything?" And she pulled at her gold mesh bag, which was studded with sapphires.
"It is everything, Madame. Unless, perhaps, Madame has some question she would like to ask of me?"
The great lady drew her money out and tossed it on the table.
The woman with the white hair and those heavily lidded eyes did not touch it. The great lady got to her feet and started to the door. Quite suddenly she stopped.
"When--" She made an effort to steady her voice. "When will this thing--; this wound--come--?"
The woman with the white hair bent over the charts again. And then she caught up a pencil and made little signs on the yellow paper and drew a triangle through them and across them at the points.
"The fourth day of the second month from now, Madame."
The great lady came back to the table and stood there looking down.
The woman with the white hair stared up in astonishment.
The great lady's ringed fingers spread out, pale and taut at her sides. The jewels of the rings showed in dark, glistening stains against the white of her skin.
"What you've just told me--all of it. I don't see how you know--how you can know. It's true. I can't understand how it can be true. But it is. Every word of it."