"You mustn't, yet!" she cried with feeling. "Rest first. Sit here longer first. Or go another day!"
"Have you touched _them_?" cried Philippe's mother, rising from the chair. "I must go at once, at once----" but even as she tried to cross the room she leant heavily upon the table and put her hand to her heart. "Get me water, Elsie," she said, and threw up her veil. Her ruined face was grey even at the lips; her eyes were caverns, worn by the dropping of water, her mouth was folded tightly that nothing kind or hopeful, or happy might come out of it again. Elsie ran to the washing-stand. Unfortunately she seized the glass with the golden scrolling, and when she held it to the lips of her mistress those lips refused it.
"_That_, too, that glass of mine! Elsie, I wish this woman gone. Why don't you get up? Where are your clothes? Why don't you dress and go--"
"Ah!" dragging herself weakly to the door, "I must take an inventory. That is what I should have done before! If I don't make a list at once I shall lose something!"
"Take an inventory!" exclaimed the _concierge_ mockingly, as she followed her. "The house won't change! After four years--it isn't now that it will change!" She paused at the door and looked back at Fanny. "Don't worry about the room, mademoiselle. She is like that--_elle a des crises._ She cannot possibly sleep here. Keep the room for a day or two till you find another."
"In a very few days I shall be going to England."
"Keep it a week if necessary. She will be persuaded when she is calmer. Why did they let her come when they wrote me that she was a dying woman! But no--_elle est comme toujours--méchante pour tout le monde._"
"You told me she thought only of Philippe."
"Ah, mademoiselle, she is like many of us! She has still her sense of property."
Around the Spanish Square the first sun-awnings had been put up in the night, awnings red and yellow, flapping in the mountain wind.
In the shops under the arches, in the market in the centre of the Square, they were selling anemones.
"None. There has been none these three days."
"Mademoiselle, the train did not bring any."
"Must I eat anemones? Give me two bunches."
And round the Spanish Square the orange awnings protecting the empty shop-fronts shuddered and flapped, like a gay hat worn unsteadily when the stomach is empty.