Meanwhile Claire, trembling from head to foot, looked out through the
window at the little garden, white with snow, where Sidonie's footsteps
were already effaced by the fast-falling flakes, as if to bear witness
that that precipitate departure was without hope of return.

Up-stairs they were still dancing. The mistress of the house was
supposed to be busy with the preparations for supper, while she was
flying, bare-headed, forcing back sobs and shrieks of rage.

Where was she going? She had started off like a mad woman, running
across the garden and the courtyard of the factory, and under the dark
arches, where the cruel, freezing wind blew in eddying circles. Pere
Achille did not recognize her; he had seen so many shadows wrapped in
white pass his lodge that night.

The young woman's first thought was to join the tenor Cazaboni, whom at
the last she had not dared to invite to her ball; but he lived at
Montmartre, and that was very far away for her to go, in that garb; and
then, would he be at home? Her parents would take her in, doubtless; but
she could already hear Madame Chebe's lamentations and the little man's
sermon under three heads. Thereupon she thought of Delobelle, her old
Delobelle. In the downfall of all her splendors she remembered the man
who had first initiated her into fashionable life, who had given her
lessons in dancing and deportment when she was a little girl, laughed at
her pretty ways, and taught her to look upon herself as beautiful before
any one had ever told her that she was so. Something told her that that
fallen star would take her part against all others. She entered one of
the carriages standing at the gate and ordered the driver to take her to
the actor's lodgings on the Boulevard Beaumarchais.