She believed what he was saying, feared that he might go, and feared the sadness of living without him.  She replied: 

“I found you in my path.  I do not wish to lose you.  No, I do not wish to lose you.”

Timid yet violent, he stammered; the words were stifled in his throat.  Twilight descended from the far-off mountains, and the last reflections of the sun became pallid in the east.  She said: 

“If you knew my life, if you had seen how empty it was before I knew you, you would know what you are to me, and would not think of abandoning me.”

But, with the tranquil tone of her voice and with the rustle of her skirts on the pavement, she irritated him.

He told her how he suffered.  He knew now the divine malady of love.

“The grace of your thoughts, your magnificent courage, your superb pride, I inhale them like a perfume.  It seems to me when you speak that your mind is floating on your lips.  Your mind is for me only the odor of your beauty.  I have retained the instincts of a primitive man; you have reawakened them.  I feel that I love you with savage simplicity.”

She looked at him softly and said nothing.  They saw the lights of evening, and heard lugubrious songs coming toward them.  And then, like spectres chased by the wind, appeared the black penitents.  The crucifix was before them.  They were Brothers of Mercy, holding torches, singing psalms on the way to the cemetery.  In accordance with the Italian custom, the cortege marched quickly.  The crosses, the coffin, the banners, seemed to leap on the deserted quay.  Jacques and Therese stood against the wall in order that the funeral train might pass.

The black avalanche had disappeared.  There were women weeping behind the coffin carried by the black phantoms, who wore heavy shoes.

Therese sighed: 

“What will be the use of having tormented ourselves in this world?”

He looked as if he had not heard, and said: 

“Before I knew you I was not unhappy.  I liked life.  I was retained in it by dreams.  I liked forms, and the mind in forms, the appearances that caress and flatter.  I had the joy of seeing and of dreaming.  I enjoyed everything and depended upon nothing.  My desires, abundant and light, I gratified without fatigue.  I was interested in everything and wished for nothing.  One suffers only through the will.  Without knowing it, I was happy.  Oh, it was not much, it was only enough to live.  Now I have no joy in life.  My pleasures, the interest that I took in the images of life and of art, the vivid amusement of creating with my hands the figures of my dreams—­you have made me lose everything and have not left me even regret.  I do not want my liberty and tranquillity again.  It seems to me that before I knew you I did not live; and now that I feel that I am living, I can not live either far from you or near you.  I am more wretched than the beggars we saw on the road to Ema.  They had air to breathe, and I can breathe only you, whom I have not.  Yet I am glad to have known you.  That alone counts in my existence.  A moment ago I thought I hated you.  I was wrong; I adore you, and I bless you for the harm you have done me.  I love all that comes to me from you.”