Part 23 (2/2)

”For a moment in the midst of time I knew how much I had loved her, she who had been alive and who was dead, who had been the sun and who was now a kind of obscure spring under the earth.

”And I also mourned the human heart. That night I understood the extremes of what I had felt. Then the inevitable forgetfulness came, the time came when it did not sadden me to remember that I had mourned.

”That is the confession I wanted to make to you, Anna. I wanted this story of love, which is a quarter of a century old, never to end. It was so real and thrilling, it was such a big thing, that I told it to you in all simplicity, to you who will survive. After that I came to love you and I do love you. I offer to you as to a sovereign the image of the little creature who will always be seventeen.”

He sighed. What he said proved to me once more the inadequacy of religion to comfort the human heart.

”Now I adore you and you alone--I who adored her, I whom she adored.

How can there possibly be a paradise where one would find happiness again?”

His voice rose, his inert arms trembled. He came out of his profound immobility for a moment.

”Ah, /you/ are the one, /you/ are the one--/you/ alone.”

And a great cry of impotence broke from him.

”Anna, Anna, if you and I had been really married, if we had lived together as man and wife, if we had had children, if you had been beside me as you are this evening, but really beside me!”

He fell back. He had cried out so loud that even if there had been no breach in the wall, I should have heard him in my room. He voiced his whole dream, he threw it out pa.s.sionately. This sincerity, which was indifferent to everything, had a definite significance which bruised my heart.

”Forgive me. Forgive me. It is almost blasphemy. I could not help it.”

He stopped. You felt his will-power making his face calm, his soul compelling him to silence, but his eyes seemed to mourn.

He repeated in a lower voice, as if to himself, ”You! You!”

He fell asleep with ”You” on his lips.

He died that night. I saw him die. By a strange chance he was alone at the last moment.

There was no death rattle, no death agony, properly speaking. He did not claw the bedclothes with his fingers, nor speak, nor cry. No last sigh, no last flash.

He had asked Anna for a drink. As there was no more water in the room and the nurse happened to be away at that moment, she had gone out to get some quickly. She did not even shut the door.

The lamplight filled the room. I watched the man's face and felt, by some sign, that the great silence at that moment was drowning him.

Then instinctively I cried out to him. I could not help crying out so that he should not be alone.

”I see you!”

My strange voice, disused from speaking, penetrated into the room.

But he died at the very instant that I gave him my madman's alms. His head dropped back stiffly, his eyeb.a.l.l.s rolled. Anna came in again.

She must have caught the sound of my outcry vaguely, for she hesitated.

She saw him. A fearful cry burst from her with all the force of her healthy body, a true widow's cry. She dropped on her knees at the bedside.

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