She had never left his bedside for a moment, night or day, and when he died her grief was so terrible that people thought she would go out of her mind; and the day after he was buried she was not to be found anywhere—she had disappeared, taking nothing with her, not even her clothes—simply vanished and left no sign, no message of any kind.
All the ponds had been searched—all the wells, and the small stream that flows through Vibraye—and the old forest.
Taffy went to Vibraye, cross-examined everybody he could, communicated with the Paris police, but with no result, and every afternoon, with a beating heart, he went to the Morgue....
The news was of course kept from Little Billee. There was no difficulty about this. He never asked a question, hardly ever spoke.
When he first got up and w
