Part 15 (2/2)

But it looked to me as if she were about to make a different decision, one contrary to her material interests, in all the purity of her soul, which was so transparent--the decision to give herself to him freely.

”Tell me!” he murmured.

There was almost a smile on her mouth, the mouth to which supplications had been offered as to an altar.

The dying man, feeling that she was about to accept, murmured:

”I love life.” He shook his head. ”I have so little time left, so little time that I do not want to sleep at night any more.”

Then he paused and waited for her to speak.

”Yes,” she said, and lightly touched--hardly grazed--the old man's hand with her own.

And in spite of myself, my inexorable, attentive eye could not help detecting the stamp of theatrical solemnity, of conscious grandeur in her gesture. Even though devoted and chaste, without any ulterior motive, her sacrifice had a self-glorifying pride, which I perceived--I who saw everything.

In the boarding-house, the strangers were the sole topic of conversation. They occupied three rooms and had a great deal of baggage, and the man seemed to be very rich, though simple in his tastes. They were to stay in Paris until the young woman's delivery, in a month or so. She expected to go to a hospital nearby. But the man was very ill, they said. Madame Lemercier was extremely annoyed.

She was afraid he would die in her house. She had made arrangements by correspondence, otherwise she would not have taken these people in--in spite of the tone that their wealth might give to her house. She hoped he would last long enough to be able to leave. But when you spoke to her, she seemed to be worried.

When I saw him again, I felt he was really going to die soon. He sat in his chair, collapsed, with his elbows on the arms of the chair and his hands drooping. It seemed difficult for him to look at things, and he held his face bowed down, so that the light from the window did not reveal his pupils, but only the edge of the lower lids, which gave the impression of his eyes having been put out. I remembered what the poet had said, and I trembled before this man whose life was over, who reviewed almost his entire existence like a terrible sovereign, and was wrapped in a beauty that was of G.o.d.

CHAPTER IX

Some one knocked at the door.

It was time for the doctor. The sick man raised himself uncertainly in awe of the master.

”How have you been to-day?”

”Bad.”

”Well, well,” the doctor said lightly.

They were left alone together. The man dropped down again with a slowness and awkwardness that would have seemed ridiculous if it had not been so sad. The doctor stood between us.

”How has your heart been behaving?”

By an instinct which seemed tragic to me, they both lowered their voices, and in a low tone the sick man gave his daily account of the progress of his malady.

The man of science listened, interrupted, and nodded his head in approval. He put an end to the recital by repeating his usual meaningless a.s.surances, in a raised voice now and with his usual broad gesture.

”Well, well, I see there's nothing new.”

He s.h.i.+fted his position and I saw the patient, his drawn features and wild eyes. He was all shaken up by this talking about the dreadful riddle of his illness.

<script>