ught that perhaps she would see him come in some day,
wounded and dying, that he would sit down on the little low chair, lay
his head on her knees, and with a great sob tell her of his suffering
and say to her, "Comfort me."

That forlorn hope kept her alive for three weeks. She needed so little
as that.

But no. Even that was denied her. Frantz had gone, gone without a glance
for her, without a parting word. The lover's desertion was followed by
the desertion of the friend. It was horrible!

At her father's first words, she felt as if she were hurled into a deep,
ice-cold abyss, filled with darkness, into which she plunged swiftly,
helplessly, well knowing that she would never return to the light. She
was suffocating. She would have liked to resist, to struggle, to call
for help.

Who was there who had the power to sustain her in that great disaster?

God? The thing that is called Heaven?

She did not even think of that. In Paris, especially in the quarters
where the working class live, the houses are too high, the streets too
narrow, the air too murky for heaven to be seen.

It was Death alone at which the little cripple was gazing so earnestly.
Her course was determined upon at once: she must die. But how?

Sitting motionless in her easy-chair, she considered what manner of
death she should choose. As she was almost never alone, she could not
think of the brazier of charcoal, to be lighted after closing the doors
and windows. As she never went out she could not think either of poison
to be purchased at the druggist's, a little package of white powder
to be buried in the depths of the pocket, with the needle-case and the
thimble. There was the phosphorus on the matches, too, the verdigris on
old sous, the open window with the paved street below; but the thought
of forcing upon her parents the ghastly spectacle of a self-inflicted
death-agony, the thought that what would remain of her, picked up amid
a crowd of people, would be so frightful to look upon, made her reject
that method.

She still had the river. At all events, the water carries you away
somewhere, so that nobody finds you and your death is shrouded in
mystery.

The river! She shuddered at the mere thought. But it was not the vision
of the deep, black water that terrified her. The girls of Paris laugh
at that. You throw your apron over your head so that you can't see, and
pouf! But she must go downstairs, into the street, all alone, and the
str