MARIE-NOEL HAS DISAPPEARED
"Marie-Noel has disappeared," cried Francoise.
"Go back to bed, Francoise," I said. 'We'll soon find her."
"But her bed hasn't slept in," said Francoise, "and Germaine says that she had not undressed."
Blanche led Francoise away, still crying.
I turned to Germaine. "Go and tell Gaston to start searching the grounds, and tell him to get anyone
else he can to help. Monsieur Paul and I will be down immediately."
Just then Charlotte came, "I think I was the last to see her. When I went upstairs last night I saw
her kneeling outside the door of the dressing-room. She wanted to say good night to her Papa, but
she could not make you hear. She said, 'My Papa needs me.' Then she came with me as far as her own
staircase, and I went to see Madame la Comtesse, who was sleeping peacefully."
Gaston came and told me that Caesar, the dog, was missing. I thought, "If Marie-Noel has taken
Caesar with her, she didn't mean to kill herself, and Caesar will protect her against any dangers."
Paul and the men and I divided the ground to be searched. I went through the woods and came out into
fields. Then I saw that I had come nearby the glass factory. Everyone seemed to be asleep there.
Then a window opened close to where I was standing. It was Julie.
"You came quickly," she said. "I telephoned to the chateau ten minutes ago, but could get no answer.
come in."
I climbed through the window into the room. It was the same room which I had entered before--the
room which was once the sitting-room of Maurice Duval. Marie-Nole lay under a warm blanket taken
from a bed. Caesar was lying at her feet.
"Ernest saw Caesar standing guard beside the well. She must have climbed down to the bottom and
lain there among the broken glass all night. She was asleep when he brought her up."
"Oh! She wasn't drowned!" I said.
"No, of course not. There has been no water in that well for fifteen years."
"I didn't know. I'm a stranger here. Tell me what I ought to do."
"You were always a stranger at the glass factory," she said. "You can't bring back your young days,
just as you can't bring back Monsieur Duval, whose only mistake was trying to save the glass factory
while you were away at the war. You and your men said that he had been helping and working for the
Germans, and they shot him and threw him into the well and buried him under broken glass."
So Julie knew and everyone knew that Jean de Gue had killed Maurice Duval. Only I, the supposed Jean
de Gue, did not know. And Marie-Noel knew. She thought that my burnt hand, my strange behaviour were
at attempt to punish myself. She had taken my punishment upon herself by acting the part of the man
whom I had killed. Only so could she bring God's forgiveness to her father. Tears rose to my eyes.
Blanche came into the house. She said nothing but went straight to Marie-Noel and knelt beside her.
"Where did you find her?" she turned to Julie.
"Julie looked, questionting, at me. "Ernest found her here, inside the house."
"She has been lying among broken glass. Her pockets are full of glass." Blanche drew out from the
child's coat pocket a handful of very small objects, a beautifully-shaped pot no bigger than a
finger-nail, a wine bottle, a little wine-glass, and a Chateau of Saint Gilles, made of glass--
beautifully made but with two of the towers broken.
"These have not been made since the beginning of the war," said Blanche. "I know, because I helped
to plan them; I disigned them, and made the drawings for them."
Blanche looked away from the child, at the tables, chairs, book-cases. I understood: what she
was looking at had once been part of her life. Her eyes filled with tears. I knew why: this dusty
room in master's house was to have been the home of two people who loved each other, both of them
faithful to the past and looking forward into the future. But something happened. Her sorrow was
turned inward. The Cross before which he knelt in her bedroom carried on in the death of her hope.
Marie-Noel's eyes opened. She sat up. "I have had a terrible dream," she said.
The telephone rang in the office at the end of the house. Julie went to answer.
Marie-Noel looked troubled. "I hoped that's not the beginning of it," she said.
"The beginning of what?" I asked.
"The beginning of my terrible dream." She stood up, dusted her coat and put her hand in mine; "The
Holy Mother is anxious about all of us. She told me that Grandma wanted Mama to die, and in my
dream I wanted her to die too. And so did you. We were very bad. Isn't there something which you
can do to stop it coming true?"