from
his widowerhood. He regretted his lost happiness, was angry with fate,
which separated united couples so brutally, and which made choice of a
tranquil existence, whose sleepy quietude had not hitherto been troubled
by any cares or chimeras, in order to rob it of its happiness.

Had he been younger, he might, perhaps, have been tempted to form a new
line, to fill up the vacant place, and to marry again. But when a man is
nearly sixty, such ideas make people laugh, for they have something
ridiculous and insane about them; and so he dragged on his dull and
weary existence, escaped from all those familiar objects which
constantly recalled the past to him, and went from hotel to hotel
without taking an interest in anything, without becoming intimate with
anyone, even temporarily; inconsolable, silent, almost enigmatical, and
looking funereal in his eternal black clothes.

He was generally alone, though on rare occasions he was accompanied by
his only son, who used to yawn by stealth, and who seemed to be mentally
counting the hours, as if he were performing some hateful, enforced duty
in spite of himself.

Two years of this crystallization went past, and one was as monotonous,
and as void of incident, as the other.

One evening, however, in a boarding-house at Cannes, where he was
staying on his wanderings, there was a young woman dressed in mourning,
among the new arrivals, who sat next to him at dinner. She had a sad,
pale face, that told of suffering, a beautiful figure, and large, blue
eyes with deep rings round them, but which, nevertheless, looked like
the first star which shines in the twilight.

All remarked her, although he usually took no notice of women, no matter
whatever they were, ugly or pretty; he looked at her and listened to
her. He felt less lonely by her side, though he did not know why. He
trembled with instinctive and confused happiness, just as if in some
distant country he had found some female friend or relative, who at last
would understand him, tell him some news, and talk to him in his dear
native language about everything that a man leaves behind him when he
exiles himself from home.

What strange affinity had thrown them together thus? What secret forces
had brought their grief in contact? What made him so sanguine and so
calm, and incited him to take her suddenly into his confidences, and
urged him on to resistless curiosity?

She was an experienced traveler, who had no illusions,