"Never a thing while she lives," was the whispered reply.
"But she has her life," said the dwarf; "she wished it so." "What's the good!" The old woman had divined why Elise had wanted to live.
The dwarf did not answer.

His eyes wandered about abstractedly, and fell again upon Elise's mother sleeping, unconscious of the awful peril passed, and the painful salvation come to her daughter.
The blue-grey light of morning showed under the edge of the closed window-blind.

In the room day was mingling incongruously with night, for the candle looked sickly, and the aged crone's face was of a leaden colour, lighted by the piercing eyes that brooded hungrily on her son--her only son: the dwarf had told her of Gabriel's death.
Parpon opened the door and went out.

Day was spreading over the drowsy landscape.

There was no life as yet in all the horizon, no fires, no animals stirring, no early workmen, no anxious harvesters.