She found the window open and saw her husband on the bed, sleeping, his head turned toward her; she stopped and asked herself if she should cross the threshold and wake him.

At this moment, with closed lips, he pronounced several words more distinctly than those that had so many times escaped him:  “Phillis—­forgive.”

He dreamed of her.  Poor, dear Victor! for what did he wish her to pardon him?  Doubtless for having threatened to hypnotize her: 

Overcome by this proof of love she put her head through the opening of the window to give him a look before returning to her mother, but on seeing his face in the full white light of the morning, she was frightened; it expressed the most violent sorrow, the features convulsed with anguish and horror at the same time.  Surely he was ill.  She must wake him.  Just as she took a step toward him he began to speak:  “Your brother—­or me?”

She stopped as if thunderstruck, then instinctively she drew back and clung to the window in the vestibule to keep herself from falling, repeating those two words that she had just heard, not understanding, not wishing to understand.

Instead of returning to her mother, trembling and holding on to the wall she entered the parlor and let herself fall into a chair, prostrated, crushed.

“Your brother—­or me?”

This was, then, the truth, the frightful truth that she had never wished to see.

She stayed there until the noises in the street warned her that it was getting late, and she might be surprised.  Then she returned to her mother.

“I am going out,” she said; “I will return at half-past eight or nine o’clock.”

“But your husband will not see you before going to the hospital.”

“You will tell him that I have gone out.”

She returned at half-past nine.  Madame Cormier had finished dressing.

“At last you have come,” she said.

But at sight of her daughter’s face she saw that something had happened.  “My God!  What is the matter?” she asked, trembling.

“Something serious—­very serious, but unfortunately it is irreparable.  We must leave here, never to return.”

“Your husband—­”

“You must never speak to me of him.  This the only thing I ask of you.”

“Alas!  I understand.  It is what I foresaw, what I said would happen.  You cannot bear the contempt that he shows us on account of your brother.”

“We must hereafter be strangers to each other, and this is why we leave this house.”

“My God!  At my age, to drag my bones—­”

“I have engaged a lodging at the Ternes; a wagon will come to take the furniture that belongs to us, what we brought here, only that.  We will tell the concierge that we are going to the country.  As for Josephine, you need not fear indiscreet questions, for I have given her a day off.”

“But the money?”

“I have two hundred francs from the sale of my last picture; that is enough for the present.  Before they are gone I shall have painted and sold another; do not worry, we shall have all we need.”