.

"But the most wretched thing, is it not--is to drag out, as I do, a
useless existence. If our pains were only of some use to someone, we
should find consolation in the thought of the sacrifice."

He started off in praise of virtue, duty, and silent immolation, having
himself an incredible longing for self-sacrifice that he could not
satisfy.

"I should much like," she said, "to be a nurse at a hospital."

"Alas! men have none of these holy missions, and I see nowhere any
calling--unless perhaps that of a doctor."

With a slight shrug of her shoulders, Emma interrupted him to speak of
her illness, which had almost killed her. What a pity! She should not be
suffering now! Leon at once envied the calm of the tomb, and one evening
he had even made his will, asking to be buried in that beautiful rug
with velvet stripes he had received from her. For this was how they
would have wished to be, each setting up an ideal to which they were now
adapting their past life. Besides, speech is a rolling-mill that always
thins out the sentiment.

But at this invention of the rug she asked, "But why?"

"Why?" He hesitated. "Because I loved you so!" And congratulating
himself at having surmounted the difficulty, Leon watched her face out
of the corner of his eyes.

It was like the sky when a gust of wind drives the clouds across. The
mass of sad thoughts that darkened them seemed to be lifted from her
blue eyes; her whole face shone. He waited. At last she replied--

"I always suspected it."

Then they went over all the trifling events of that far-off existence,
whose joys and sorrows they had just summed up in one word. They
recalled the arbour with clematis, the dresses she had worn, the
furniture of her room, the whole of her house.

"And our poor cactuses, where are they?"

"The cold killed them this winter."

"Ah! how I have thought of them, do you know? I often saw them again as
of yore, when on the summer mornings the sun beat down upon your blinds,
and I saw your two bare arms passing out amongst the flowers."

"Poor friend!" she said, holding out her hand to him.

Leon swiftly pressed his lips to it. Then, when he had taken a deep
breath--

"At that time you were to me I know not what incomprehensible force that
took captive my life. Once, for instance, I went to see you; but you, no
doubt, do not remember it."

"I do," she said; "go on."

"You were downstairs in the ante-room, ready to go out, standing o