oidered light. There is a bed
in it, with a cover of sky-blue satinette shining like the blue of a
chromo. It is Marie's room! Her gray silk hat, rose-trimmed, hangs
from a nail on the flowery paper. She has not worn it since my aunt's
death; and alongside hang black dresses. I enter this bright blue
sanctuary, inhabited only by a cold and snow-like light, and orderly
and chaste as a picture.

My hand goes out like a thief's. I touch, I stroke these dresses,
which are wont to touch Marie. I turn again to the blue-veiled bed.
On a whatnot there are books, and their titles invite me; for where her
thoughts dwell, the things which occupy her mind--but I leave them. I
would rather go near her bed. With a movement at once mad, frightened
and trembling, I lift the quilts that clothe it and my gaze enters it,
and my knees lean trembling on the edge of this great lifeless thing,
which, alone among dead things, is one of soft and supple flesh.

* * * * * *

My customary life continues and my work is always the same. I make
notes, by the way, of Crillon's honest trivialities; of Brisbille's
untimely outbursts; of the rumors anent the Pocard scheme, and the
progress of the Association of Avengers, a society to promote national
awakening, founded by Monsieur Joseph Boneas. The same complex and
monotonous existence bears me along as it does everybody. But since
that tragic night when my sorrow was transformed into joy at the
lyke-wake in the old room, in truth the world is no longer what it was.
People and things appear to me shadowy and distant when I go out into
the current of the crowds; when I am dressing in my room and decide
that I look well in black; when I sit up late at my table in the
sunshine of hope. Now and again the memory of my aunt comes bodily
back to me. Sometimes I hear people pronounce the name of Marie. My
body starts when it hears them say "Marie," who know not what they say.
And there are moments when our separation throbs so warmly that I do
not know whether she is here or absent.

* * * * * *

During this walk that we have just had together the summer and the
sweetness of living have weighed more than ever on my shoulders. Her
huge home, which is such a swarming hive at certain times, is now
immensely empty in the labyrinth of its dark stairs and the landings,
whence issue the narrow closed streets of its corridors, an