y expected to see it move on hearing them, as it had done some hours
before.

Duroy resumed: "Oh! it is a heavy blow for you, and such a complete
change in your existence, a shock to your heart and your whole life."

She gave a long sigh, without replying, and he continued, "It is so
painful for a young woman to find herself alone as you will be."

He paused, but she said nothing, and he again went on, "At all events,
you know the compact entered into between us. You can make what use of
me you will. I belong to you."

She held out her hand, giving him at the same time one of those sweet,
sad looks which stir us to the very marrow.

"Thank you, you are very kind," she said. "If I dared, and if I could do
anything for you, I, too, should say, 'You may count upon me.'"

He had taken the proffered hand and kept it clasped in his, with a
burning desire to kiss it. He made up his mind to this at last, and
slowly raising it to his mouth, held the delicate skin, warm, slightly
feverish and perfumed, to his lips for some time. Then, when he felt
that his friendly caress was on the point of becoming too prolonged, he
let fall the little hand. It sank back gently onto the knee of its
mistress, who said, gravely: "Yes, I shall be very lonely, but I shall
strive to be brave."

He did not know how to give her to understand that he would be happy,
very happy, to have her for his wife in his turn. Certainly he could not
tell her so at that hour, in that place, before that corpse; yet he
might, it seemed to him, hit upon one of those ambiguous, decorous, and
complicated phrases which have a hidden meaning under their words, and
which express all one wants to by their studied reticence. But the
corpse incommoded him, the stiffened corpse stretched out before them,
and which he felt between them. For some time past, too, he fancied he
detected in the close atmosphere of the room a suspicious odor, a
foetid breath exhaling from the decomposing chest, the first whiff of
carrion which the dead lying on their bed throw out to the relatives
watching them, and with which they soon fill the hollow of their
coffin.

"Cannot we open the window a little?" said Duroy. "It seems to me that
the air is tainted."

"Yes," she replied, "I have just noticed it, too."

He went to the window and opened it. All the perfumed freshness of night
flowed in, agitating the flame of the two lighted candles beside the
bed. The moon was shedding, as on th