The wind blew hard, and Christine, shivering, her eyes full of tears, felt the bridge move under her, as if it were bearing her away amid a smash up of the whole scene.  Had not Claude moved?  Was he not climbing over the rail?  No; everything became motionless again, and she saw him still on the same spot, obstinately stiff, with his eyes turned towards the point of the Cite, which he could not see.

It had summoned him, and he had come, and yet he could not see it in the depths of the darkness.  He could only distinguish the bridges, with their light framework standing out blackly against the sparkling water.  But farther off everything became confused, the island had disappeared, he could not even have told its exact situation if some belated cabs had not passed from time to time over the Pont-Neuf, with their lamps showing like those shooting sparks which dart at times through embers.  A red lantern, on a level with the dam of the Mint, cast a streamlet of blood, as it were, into the water.  Something huge and lugubrious, some drifting form, no doubt a lighter which had become unmoored, slowly descended the stream amid the reflections.  Espied for a moment, it was immediately afterwards lost in the darkness.  Where had the triumphal island sunk?  In the depths of that flow of water?  Claude still gazed, gradually fascinated by the great rushing of the river in the night.  He leant over its broad bed, chilly like an abyss, in which the mysterious flames were dancing.  And the loud, sad wail of the current attracted him, and he listened to its call, despairing, unto death.

By a shooting pain at her heart, Christine this time realised that the terrible thought had just occurred to him.  She held out her quivering hands which the wind was lashing.  But Claude remained there, struggling against the sweetness of death; indeed he did not move for another hour, he lingered there unconscious of the lapse of time, with his eyes still turned in the direction of the Cite, as if by a miracle of power they were about to create light, and conjure up the island so that he might behold it.

When Claude at last left the bridge, with stumbling steps, Christine had to pass in front and run in order to be home in the Rue Tourlaque before him.

XII

IT was nearly three o’clock when they went to bed that night, with the bitter cold November wind blowing through their little room and the big studio.  Christine, breathless from her run, had quickly slipped between the sheets so that he might not know that she had followed him; and Claude, quite overcome, had taken his clothes off, one garment after another, without saying a word.  For long months they had been as strangers; until then, however, she had never felt such a barrier between them, such tomb-like coldness.