hy do you
extend your hand to me with derisive phrases? Whether you wished it or
not, you have made me desperately in love with you. You have become
my evil, my suffering, my torture, and you ask me to be an agreeable
friend. Now you are coquettish and cruel. If you can not love me, let me
go; I will go, I do not know where, to forget and hate you. For I have
against you a latent feeling of hatred and anger. Oh, I love you, I love
you!"

She believed what he was saying, feared that he might go, and feared the
sadness of living without him. She replied:

"I found you in my path. I do not wish to lose you. No, I do not wish to
lose you."

Timid yet violent, he stammered; the words were stifled in his throat.
Twilight descended from the far-off mountains, and the last reflections
of the sun became pallid in the east. She said:

"If you knew my life, if you had seen how empty it was before I
knew you, you would know what you are to me, and would not think of
abandoning me."

But, with the tranquil tone of her voice and with the rustle of her
skirts on the pavement, she irritated him.

He told her how he suffered. He knew now the divine malady of love.

"The grace of your thoughts, your magnificent courage, your superb
pride, I inhale them like a perfume. It seems to me when you speak that
your mind is floating on your lips. Your mind is for me only the odor of
your beauty. I have retained the instincts of a primitive man; you have
reawakened them. I feel that I love you with savage simplicity."

She looked at him softly and said nothing. They saw the lights of
evening, and heard lugubrious songs coming toward them. And then, like
spectres chased by the wind, appeared the black penitents. The crucifix
was before them. They were Brothers of Mercy, holding torches, singing
psalms on the way to the cemetery. In accordance with the Italian
custom, the cortege marched quickly. The crosses, the coffin, the
banners, seemed to leap on the deserted quay. Jacques and Therese stood
against the wall in order that the funeral train might pass.

The black avalanche had disappeared. There were women weeping behind the
coffin carried by the black phantoms, who wore heavy shoes.

Therese sighed:

"What will be the use of having tormented ourselves in this world?"

He looked as if he had not heard, and said:

"Before I knew you I was not unhappy. I liked life. I was retained in
it by dreams. I liked forms, and the mind in form