There was a strange numbness in
his mind and body, and he had a feeling that he moved immense and
reflective among material things. Only tragedy can produce that feeling.
Happiness makes the universe infinite and stupendous, despair makes it
small and even trivial.
It was when he had reached the little office where he had done the
business of his life--a kind of neutral place where he had ever isolated
himself from the domestic scene--that the final sensation, save one, of
his existence at the Manor came to him. Virginie Poucette had divined
his purpose when he began the tour of the house, and going by a
roundabout way, she had placed herself where she could speak with him
alone before he left the place for ever--if that was to be. She was not
sure that his exit was really inevitable--not yet.
When Jean Jacques saw Virginie standing beside the table in his office
where he lead worked over so many years, now marked Sold, and waiting to
be taken away by its new owner, he started and drew back, but she held
out her hand and said:
"But one word, M'sieu' Jean Jacques; only one word from a friend--indeed
a friend."
"A friend of friends," he answered, still in abstraction, his eyes having
that burnished light which belonged to the night of the fire; but yet
realizing that she was a sympathetic soul who had offered to lend him
money without security.
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