coverlet from the bed; then together we lifted her and laid her, still dressed, on the bed.  When she came to herself she motioned to us to unfasten her belt.  Monsieur de Mortsauf found a pair of scissors, and cut through it; I made her breathe salts, and she opened her eyes.  The count left the room, more ashamed than sorry.  Two hours passed in perfect silence.  Henriette’s hand lay in mine; she pressed it to mine, but could not speak.  From time to time she opened her eyes as if to tell me by a look that she wished to be still and silent; then suddenly, for an instant, there seemed a change; she rose on her elbow and whispered, “Unhappy man!—­ah! if you did but know—­”

She fell back upon the pillow.  The remembrance of her past sufferings, joined to the present shock, threw her again into the nervous convulsions I had just calmed by the magnetism of love,—­a power then unknown to me, but which I used instinctively.  I held her with gentle force, and she gave me a look which made me weep.  When the nervous motions ceased I smoothed her disordered hair, the first and only time that I ever touched it; then I again took her hand and sat looking at the room, all brown and gray, at the bed with its simple chintz curtains, at the toilet table draped in a fashion now discarded, at the commonplace sofa with its quilted mattress.  What poetry I could read in that room!  What renunciations of luxury for herself; the only luxury being its spotless cleanliness.  Sacred cell of a married nun, filled with holy resignation; its sole adornments were the crucifix of her bed, and above it the portrait of her aunt; then, on each side of the holy water basin, two drawings of the children made by herself, with locks of their hair when they were little.  What a retreat for a woman whose appearance in the great world of fashion would have made the handsomest of her sex jealous!  Such was the chamber where the daughter of an illustrious family wept out her days, sunken at this moment in anguish, and denying herself the love that might have comforted her.  Hidden, irreparable woe!  Tears of the victim for her slayer, tears of the slayer for his victim!  When the children and waiting-woman came at length into the room I left it.  The count was waiting for me; he seemed to seek me as a mediating power between himself and his wife.  He caught my hands, exclaiming, “Stay, stay with us, Felix!”

“Unfortunately,” I said, “Monsieur de Chessel has a party, and my absence would cause remark.  But after dinner I will return.”

He left the house when I did, and took me to the lower gate without speaking; then he accompanied me to Frapesle, seeming not to know what he was doing.  At last I said to him, “For heaven’s sake, Monsieur le comte, let her manage your affairs if it pleases her, and don’t torment her.”

“I have not long to live,” he said gravely; “she will not suffer long through me; my head is giving way.”