"Be very quiet," she said. "There is something strange. When the bird
sang as it did--you heard it--she sat like one in a trance. Then her
face took on a look glad and frightened too, and she stared hard at the
cage. 'Bring that cage to me,' she said. I brought it. She looked
sharp at it, then she gave a cry and fell back. As I took the cage away
I saw what she had been looking at--a writing at the bottom of the cage.
It was the name Carmen."

With a stifled cry Jean Jacques pushed her aside and entered the room.
As he did so, the sick woman in the big armchair, so pale yet so splendid
in her death-beauty, raised herself up. With eyes that Francesca might
have turned to the vision of her fate, she looked at the opening door, as
though to learn if he who came was one she had wished to see through
long, relentless days.

"Jean Jacques--ah, my beautiful Jean Jacques!" she cried out presently in
a voice like a wisp of sound, for she had little breath; and then with a
smile she sank back, too late to hear, but not too late to know, what
Jean Jacques said to her.