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278 She could not read, got up, went out of the room, across the hall. The old man stared after her, went on reading. And it was as though her disquiet kept increasing, as though a voice—one of those voices of which she had read in that strange book—said to her:

“Go, go to-morrow!”

Never had a voice spoken so plainly to her, the old woman, and as it were ordered her to go, to go to-morrow. She was very old, in years, in movement and in feeling; and she never, never travelled. She lived quietly in her house beside the country-road, summer and winter alike; and sometimes she went for a little drive in the neighbourhood. Beyond that she no longer went, for she was gouty and full of aches and pains which bent her withered back. For years and years, she had not travelled, had not sat in the train which, for years, she had heard whistling at the station, sometimes even heard rumbling. And now the mysterious voice so plainly and insistently commanded:

“Go!”

Then she went back to the room, sat down and, this time, was unable to stifle her sigh. She sighed. The old man heard, but did not know how to ask her why she was sighing. For years, for long years, there had been so little said between them. Only now, this spring, when Henri’s letter came, they had spoken, but not much. A couple of days after receiving the letter, the old man said:

“I will write to him.”