"What is it? What is the matter? Tell me."

The girl looked up, startled, and showed a passionate face that was
horribly disfigured. Upon the right cheek, extending from the temple
almost to the line of the jaw, a razor had cut a sign, a brutal sign
of the cross. As Vere saw it, showing redly through the darkness, she
recoiled. The girl read the meaning of her movement, and shrank
backward, putting up her hand to cover the wound. But Vere recovered
instantly, and bent down once more, intent only on trying to comfort
this sorrow, whose violence seemed to open to her a door into a new
and frightful world.

"Vere!" said Artois. "Vere, you had better--"

The girl turned round to him.

"It must be Peppina!" she said.

"Yes. But--"

"Please go up to the house, Monsieur Emile. I will come in a moment."

"But I can't leave you--"

"Please go. Just tell Madre I'm soon coming."

There was something inexorable in her voice. She turned away from him
and began to speak softly to Peppina.