Now, on a certain evening in May, one of those soft, luminous evenings when life flows forth from the houses into the street through the open windows, Desiree and her mother were busily at work with needles and fingers, exhausting the daylight to its last ray, before lighting the lamp.  They could hear the shouts of children playing in the yards, the muffled notes of pianos, and the voice of a street peddler, drawing his half-empty wagon.  One could smell the springtime in the air, a vague odor of hyacinth and lilac.

Mamma Delobelle had laid aside her work, and, before closing the window, leaned upon the sill listening to all these noises of a great toiling city, taking delight in walking through the streets when its day’s work was ended.  From time to time she spoke to her daughter, without turning her head.

“Ah! there’s Monsieur Sigismond.  How early he leaves the factory to-night!  It may be because the days are lengthening so fast, but I don’t think it can be seven o’clock.  Who can that man be with the old cashier?—­What a funny thing!—­One would say—­Why, yes!—­One would say it was Monsieur Frantz.  But that isn’t possible.  Monsieur Frantz is a long way from here at this moment; and then he had no beard.  That man looks like him all the same!  Just look, my dear.”

But “my dear” does not leave her chair; she does not even stir.  With her eyes staring into vacancy, her needle in the air, arrested in its pretty, industrious movement, she has gone away to the blue country, that wonderful country whither one may go at will, without thought of any infirmity.  The name “Frantz,” uttered mechanically by her mother, because of a chance resemblance, represented to her a whole lifetime of illusions, of fervent hopes, ephemeral as the flush that rose to her cheeks when, on returning home at night, he used to come and chat with her a moment.  How far away that was already!  To think that he used to live in the little room near hers, that they used to hear his step on the stairs and the noise made by his table when he dragged it to the window to draw!  What sorrow and what happiness she used to feel when he talked to her of Sidonie, sitting on the low chair at her knees, while she mounted her birds and her insects.

As she worked, she used to cheer and comfort him, for Sidonie had caused poor Frantz many little griefs before the last great one.  His tone when he spoke of Sidonie, the sparkle in his eyes when he thought of her, fascinated Desiree in spite of everything, so that when he went away in despair, he left behind him a love even greater than that he carried with him—­a love which the unchanging room, the sedentary, stagnant life, kept intact with all its bitter perfume, whereas his would gradually fade away and vanish in the fresh air of the outer world.

It grows darker and darker.  A great wave of melancholy envelops the poor girl with the falling darkness of that balmy evening.  The blissful gleam from the past dies away as the last glimmer of daylight vanishes in the narrow recess of the window, where her mother still stands leaning on the sill.