re of loving her; stern necessity had just arisen between us
for the first time. I experienced a dull languor and could distinguish
nothing clearly. What my mind understood, my soul recoiled from
accepting. "Come," I said to myself, "I have desired it and I have done
it; there is not the slightest hope that we can live together; I am
unwilling to kill this woman, so I have no alternative but to leave her.
It is all over; I shall go away tomorrow."

And all the while I was thinking neither of my responsibility, nor of
the past, nor future; I thought neither of Smith nor his connection with
the affair; I could not say who had led me there, or what I had done
during the last hour. I looked at the walls of the room and thought that
all I had to do was to wait until to-morrow and decide what carriage I
would take.

I remained for a long time in this strange calm, just as the man who
receives a thrust from a poignard feels at first only the cold steel and
can often travel some distance ere he becomes weak, and his eyes start
from their sockets and he realizes what has happened. But drop by drop
the blood flows, the ground under his feet becomes red, death comes; the
man, at its approach, shudders with horror and falls as though struck
by a thunderbolt. Thus, apparently calm, I awaited the coming of
misfortune; I repeated in a low voice what Brigitte had said, and I
placed near her all that I supposed she would need for the night; then
I looked at her, then went to the window and pressed my forehead against
the pane peering out at a sombre and lowering sky; then I returned to
the bedside. That I was going away tomorrow was the only thought in my
mind, and little by little the word "depart" became intelligible to me.
"Ah! God!" I suddenly cried, "my poor mistress, I am about to lose you,
and I have not known how to love you!"

I trembled at these words as if it had been another who had pronounced
them; they resounded through all my being as resounds the string of the
harp that has been plucked to the point of breaking. In an instant
two years of suffering again racked my breast, and after them as their
consequence and as their last expression, the present seized me. How
shall I describe such woe? By a single word, perhaps, for those who have
loved. I had taken Brigitte's hand, and, in a dream, doubtless, she had
pronounced my name.

I arose and went to my room; a torrent of tears flowed from my eyes. I
held out my arms as i