“My friend,” she said, “I obey God, for his hand is in all this.”

I did not know until much later the deep meaning of her words.  We slowly returned up the terraces.  She took my arm and leaned upon it resignedly, bleeding still, but with a bandage on her wound.

“Human life is thus,” she said.  “What had Monsieur de Mortsauf done to deserve his fate?  It proves the existence of a better world.  Alas, for those who walk in happier ways!”

She went on, estimating life so truly, considering its diverse aspects so profoundly that these cold judgments revealed to me the disgust that had come upon her for all things here below.  When we reached the portico she dropped my arm and said these last words:  “If God has given us the sentiment and the desire for happiness ought he not to take charge himself of innocent souls who have found sorrow only in this low world?  Either that must be so, or God is not, and our life is no more than a cruel jest.”

She entered and turned the house quickly; I found her on the sofa, crouching, as though blasted by the voice which flung Saul to the ground.

“What is the matter?” I asked.

“I no longer know what is virtue,” she replied; “I have no consciousness of my own.”

We were silent, petrified, listening to the echo of those words which fell like a stone cast into a gulf.

“If I am mistaken in my life she is right in hers,” Henriette said at last.

Thus her last struggle followed her last happiness.  When the count came in she complained of illness, she who never complained.  I conjured her to tell me exactly where she suffered; but she refused to explain and went to bed, leaving me a prey to unending remorse.  Madeleine went with her mother, and the next day I heard that the countess had been seized with nausea, caused, she said, by the violent excitements of that day.  Thus I, who longed to give my life for hers, I was killing her.

“Dear count,” I said to Monsieur de Mortsauf, who obliged me to play backgammon, “I think the countess very seriously ill.  There is still time to save her; pray send for Origet, and persuade her to follow his advice.”

“Origet, who half killed me?” cried the count.  “No, no; I’ll consult Carbonneau.”

During this week, especially the first days of it, everything was anguish to me—­the beginning of paralysis of the heart—­my vanity was mortified, my soul rent.  One must needs have been the centre of all looks and aspirations, the mainspring of the life about him, the torch from which all others drew their light, to understand the horror of the void that was now about me.  All things were there, the same, but the spirit that gave life to them was extinct, like a blown-out flame.  I now understood the desperate desire of lovers never to see each other again when love has flown.  To be nothing where we were once so much!  To find the chilling silence