* * * * * *

“Simon!  Simon!”

A woman is here.  I wrench myself from the dream which had come into the room and taken solidity before me.  I stand up; it is my cousin Marie.

She offers me her hands among the candles which flutter by the bed.  In their poor starlight her face appears haggard and wet.  My aunt loved her.  Her lips are trembling on her rows of sparkling teeth; the whole breadth of her bosom heaves quickly.

I have sunk again into the armchair.  Memories flow again, while the sick woman’s breathing is longer drawn, and her stillness becomes more and more inexorable.  Things she used to say return to my lips.  Then my eyes are raised, and look for Marie, and turn upon her.

* * * * * *

She has leaned against the wall, and remains so—­overcome.  She invests the corner where she stands with something like profane and sumptuous beauty.  Her changeful chestnut hair, like bronze and gold, forms moist and disordered scrolls on her forehead and her innocent cheeks.  Her neck, especially, her white neck, appears to me.  The atmosphere is so choking, so visibly heavy, that it enshrouds us as if the room were on fire, and she has loosened the neck of her dress, and her throat is lighted up by the flaming logs.  I smile weakly at her.  My eyes wander over the fullness of her hips and her outspread shoulders, and fasten, in that downfallen room, on her throat, white as dawn.

* * * * * *

The doctor has been again.  He stood some time in silence by the bed; and as he looked our hearts froze.  He said it would be over to-night, and put the phial in his hand back in his pocket.  Then, regretting that he could not stay, he disappeared.

And we stayed on beside the dying woman—­so fragile that we dare not touch her, nor even try to speak to her.

Madame Piot settles down in a chair; she crosses her arms, lowers her head, and the time goes by.

At long intervals people take shape in the darkness by the door; people who come in on tiptoe whisper to us and go away.

The moribund moves her hands and feet and contorts her face.  A gurgling comes from her throat, which we can hardly see in the cavity that is like a nest of shadow under her chin.  She has blenched, and the skin that is drawn over the bones of her face like a shroud grows whiter every moment.

Intent upon her breathing, we throng about her.  We offer her our hands—­so near and so far—­and do not know what to do.