lake seemed to dry up, as though some invisible
sluice were draining the plain. The fog, so dense but a moment before,
was losing its consistency and becoming transparent, showing all the
bright hues of the rainbow. On the left bank of the Seine all was of a
heavenly blue, deepening into violet over towards the Jardin des
Plantes. Upon the right bank a pale pink, flesh-like tint suffused the
Tuileries district; while away towards Montmartre there was a fiery
glow, carmine flaming amid gold. Then, farther off, the working-men's
quarters deepened to a dusty brick-color, changing more and more till
all became a slatey, bluish grey. The eye could not yet distinguish
the city, which quivered and receded like those subaqueous depths
divined through the crystalline waves, depths with awful forests of
huge plants, swarming with horrible things and monsters faintly
espied. However, the watery mist was quickly falling. It became at
last no more than a fine muslin drapery; and bit by bit this muslin
vanished, and Paris took shape and emerged from dreamland.

To love! to love! Why did these words ring in Helene's ears with such
sweetness as the darkness of the fog gave way to light? Had she not
loved her husband, whom she had tended like a child? But a bitter
memory stirred within her--the memory of her dead father, who had hung
himself three weeks after his wife's decease in a closet where her
gowns still dangled from their hooks. There he had gasped out his last
agony, his body rigid, and his face buried in a skirt, wrapped round
by the clothes which breathed of her whom he had ever worshipped. Then
Helene's reverie took a sudden leap. She began thinking of her own
home-life, of the month's bills which she had checked with Rosalie
that very morning; and she felt proud of the orderly way in which she
regulated her household. During more than thirty years she had lived
with self-respect and strength of mind. Uprightness alone impassioned
her. When she questioned her past, not one hour revealed a sin; in her
mind's eye she saw herself ever treading a straight and level path.
Truly, the days might slip by; she would walk on peacefully as before,
with no impediment in her way. The very thought of this made her
stern, and her spirit rose in angry contempt against those lying lives
whose apparent heroism disturbs the heart. The only true life was her
own, following its course amidst such peacefulness. But over Paris
there now only hung