same
things, they scarcely understood each other, and to my eyes, from the
very first, their union appeared to be broken more than if they had
never known each other.

But he did not say what was really in his mind. You felt it in the
sound of his voice, the very charm of his intonation, his lyrical
choice of words. He thought to please her, and he lied. He was
evidently her superior, but she dominated him by a kind of inspired
sincerity. While he was master of his words, she offered her whole
self in her words.

She described her former life.

"From the windows in my room and the dining-room, I could look out on
the square. The fountain in the centre, with its shadow at its base.
I watched the day go round there, on that little, white, round place,
like a sundial.

"The postman crossed it regularly, without thinking. At the arsenal
gate stood a soldier doing nothing. Nobody else ever came there. When
noon rang like a knell, still no one. What I remember best of all was
the way noon rang like a knell--the middle of the day, absolute ennui.

"Nothing ever happened to me, nothing ever would happen to me. There
was nothing for me. The future no longer existed for me. If my days
were to go on like that, nothing would separate me from my death--
nothing! Not a thing! To be bored is to die! My life was dead, and
yet I had to live. It was suicide. Others killed themselves with
poison or with a revolver. I killed myself with minutes and hours."

"Amy!" said the man.

"Then, by dint of seeing the days born in the morning and miscarrying
in the evening, I became afraid to die, and this fear was my first
passion.

"Often, in the middle of a visit I was paying, or in the night, or when
I came home after a walk, the length of the convent wall, I shuddered
with hope because of this passion.

"But who would free me from it? Who would save me from this invisible
shipwreck, which I perceived only from time to time? Around me was a
sort of conspiracy, composed of envy, meanness and indifference.
Whatever I saw, whatever I heard, tended to throw me back into the
narrow road, that stupid narrow road along which I was going.

"Madame Martet, the one friend with whom I was a little bit intimate,
you know, only two years older than I am, told me that I must be
content with what I had. I replied, 'Then, that is the end of
everything, if I must be content with what I have. Do you really
believe what you say?