They reached the grave, and tumbled their sad burden into it; but I--I could not stir! At length my limbs obeyed my will.

I went forward to the men and said in a hollow voice in Dutch: "Whom do you bury ?" "Johanna Meyer," answered someone mechanically, for they did not seem to have taken the trouble to look at me.

As I listened to those words my heart, which had stood still waiting for the answer, beat again with a sudden bound that I could hear in the silence.
I looked up.

There, advancing from the doorway of one of the houses, very slowly, as though overpowered by weakness, and leading by the hand a mere skeleton of a child, who was chewing some leaves, I saw--I saw _Marie Marais!_ She was wasted to nothing, but I could not mistake her eyes, those great soft eyes that had grown so unnaturally large in the white, thin face.
She too saw me and stared for one moment.

Then, loosing the child, she cast up her hands, through which the sunlight shone as through parchment, and slowly sank to the ground.
"She has gone, too," said one of the men in an indifferent voice.