d
passed through a long life of suffering and emerged into a region where
any acute feeling is unable to exist, as at a certain altitude from the
earth human life can no longer exist. The beat of the horses' hoofs upon
the road had sounded hard, as her heart felt, cold as the temperature
of her mind. Her body, which usually swayed to her horse's slightest
movement, was rigid in the saddle. She recollected that once, when her
horse stumbled, she had thrilled with an abrupt anger that was almost
ferocious, and had lifted her whip to lash it. But the hand had slipped
down nervelessly, and she had fallen again into her frigid reverie.

When they reached the hotel she had dropped to the ground, heavily, and
heavily had ascended the steps of the verandah, followed by Androvsky.
Without turning to him or bidding him good-night she had gone to
her room. She had not acted with intentional rudeness or
indifference--indeed, she had felt incapable of an intention. Simply,
she had forgotten, for the first time perhaps in her life, an ordinary
act of courtesy, as an old person sometimes forgets you are there and
withdraws into himself. Androvsky had said nothing, had not tried to
attract her attention to himself. She had heard his steps die away on
the verandah. Then, mechanically, she had undressed and got into bed,
where she was now mechanically counting the passing moments.

Presently she became aware of her own stillness and connected it with
the stillness of the dead woman, by the tent. She lay, as it were,
watching her own corpse as a Catholic keeps vigil beside a body that has
not yet been put into the grave. But in this chamber of death there were
no flowers, no lighted candles, no lips that moved in prayer. She
had gone to bed without praying. She remembered that now, but with
indifference. Dead people do not pray. The living pray for them. But
even the watcher could not pray. Another hour struck in the belfry of
the church. She listened to the chime and left off counting the moments,
and this act of cessation made more perfect the peace of the dead woman.

When the sun rose her sensation of death passed away, leaving behind it,
however, a lethargy of mind and body such as she had never known before
the previous night. Suzanne, coming in to call her, exclaimed:

"Mam'selle is ill?"

"No. Why should I be ill?"

"Mam'selle looks so strange," the maid said, regarding her with round
and curious eyes. "As if--"

She hesit