“There—­now we’re at home,” says Marie, at last.

We sit down, facing each other.

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to live.”

“We’re going to live.”

I ponder.  She looks at me stealthily, with that mysterious expression of anguish which gets over me.  I notice the precautions she takes in watching me.  And once it seemed to me that her eyes were red with crying.  I—­I think of the hospital life I am leaving, of the gray street, and the simplicity of things.

* * * * * *

A day has slipped away already.  In one day all the time gone by has reestablished itself.  I am become again what I was.  Except that I am not so strong or so calm as before, it is as though nothing had happened.

But truth is more simple than before.

I inquire of Marie after this one or the other and question her.

Marie says to me: 

“You’re always saying Why?—­like a child.”

All the same I do not talk much.  Marie is assiduous; obviously she is afraid of my silence.  Once, when I was sitting opposite her and had said nothing for a long time, she suddenly hid her face in her hands, and in her turn she asked me, through her sobs: 

“Why are you like that?”

I hesitate.

“It seems to me,” I say at last, by way of answer, “that I am seeing things as they are.”

“My poor boy!” Marie says, and she goes on crying.

I am touched by this obscure trouble.  True, everything is obvious around me, but as it were laid bare.  I have lost the secret which complicated life.  I no longer have the illusion which distorts and conceals, that fervor, that sort of blind and unreasoning bravery which tosses you from one hour to the next, and from day to day.

And yet I am just taking up life again where I left it.  I am upright,
I am getting stronger and stronger.  I am not ending, but beginning.

I slept profoundly, all alone in our bed.

Next morning, I saw Crillon, planted in the living-room downstairs.  He held out his arms, and shouted.  After expressing good wishes, he informs me, all in a breath: 

“You don’t know what’s happened in the Town Council?  Down yonder, towards the place they call Little January, y’know, there’s a steep hill that gets wider as it goes down an’ there’s a gaslamp and a watchman’s box where all the cyclists that want to smash their faces, and a few days ago now a navvy comes and sticks himself in there and no one never knew his name, an’ he got a cyclist on his head an’ he’s gone dead.  And against that gaslamp broken up by blows from cyclists they proposed to put a notice-board, although all recommendations would be superfluent.  You catch on that it’s nothing less than a maneuver to get the mayor’s shirt out?”

Crillon’s words vanish.  As fast as he utters them I detach myself from all this poor old stuff.  I cannot reply to him, when he has ceased, and Marie and he are looking at me.  I say, “Ah!”