k of desire
tormented her, and soon dropping her book or her pen, her hand would
steal out, by an irresistible impulse, toward the little hand-glass
mounted in antique silver that lay upon her desk. In this oval, chiseled
frame her whole face was inclosed, like a face of days gone by, a
portrait of the last century, or a once fresh pastel now tarnished by
the sun. Then after gazing at herself a long time, she laid, with a
weary movement, the little glass upon the desk and tried to resume her
work; but ere she had read two pages or written twenty lines, she
was again seized with the invincible and torturing need of looking at
herself, and once more would extend her hand to take up the mirror.

She now handled it like an irritating and familiar toy that the hand
cannot let alone, used it continually even when receiving her friends,
and made herself nervous enough to cry out, hating it as if it were a
sentient thing while turning it in her fingers.

One day, exasperated by this struggle between herself and this bit of
glass, she threw it against the wall, where it was broken to pieces.

But after a time her husband, who had it repaired, brought it back to
her, clearer than ever; and she was compelled to take it, to thank him,
and resign herself to keep it.

Every evening, too, and every morning, shut up in her own room, she
resumed, in spite of herself, that minute and patient examination of the
quiet, odious havoc.

When she was in bed she could not sleep; she would light a candle again
and lie, wide-eyed, thinking how insomnia and grief hasten irremediably
the horrible work of fleeting time. She listened in the silence of
the night to the ticking of the clock, which seemed to murmur, in its
monotonous and regular tic-tac: "It goes, it goes, it goes!" and her
heart shrank with such suffering that, with the sheet gripped between
her teeth, she groaned in despair.

Once, like everyone else, she had some notion of the passing years and
of the changes they bring. Like everyone else, she had said to herself
every winter, every spring, and every summer, "I have changed very much
since last year." But, always beautiful, with a changing beauty, she
was never uneasy about it. Now, however, suddenly, instead of admitting
peacefully the slow march of the seasons, she had just discovered and
understood the formidable flight of the minutes. She had had a sudden
revelation of the gliding of the hour, of that imperceptible race,