Phillis rose.  “Where are the candles?” she asked.

“There are no more; this was the last.”

“Then we must brighten up the fire.”

She threw a small log on the hearth, and then, instead of resuming her seat, she took a cushion from the sofa, and placing it before the chimney, threw herself upon it, and leaned her elbow on Saniel’s knee.

“And now?” she repeated, her eyes raised to his.

“Now I suppose the only thing for me to do is to return to Auvergne and become a country doctor.”

“My God! is it possible?” she murmured in a tone that surprised Saniel.  If there was sadness in this cry, there was also a sentiment that he did not understand.

“On leaving the school I could continue to live at the Hotel du Senat, and, while giving lessons, prepare my ‘concours’; now, after having reached a certain position, can I return to this life of poverty and study?  My creditors, who have fallen on me here, will harass me, and my competitors will mock my misery—­which is caused by my vices.  They will think that I dishonor the Faculty, and I shall be rebuffed.  Neither doctor of the hospitals nor fellow, I shall be reduced to nothing but a doctor of the quarter.  Of what use is it?  The effort has been made here; you see how it has succeeded.”

“Then you mean to go?”

“Not without sorrow and despair, since it will be our separation, the renouncement of all the hopes on which I have lived for ten years, the abandonment of my work, death itself.  You see now why, in spite of your gayety, I have not been able to hide my preoccupation from you.  The more charming you were, the more I felt how dear you are, and the greater my despair at the thought of separation.”

“Why should we separate?”

“What do you mean?”

She turned toward him.

“To go with you.  You must acknowledge that until this moment I have never spoken to you of marriage, and never have I let the thought appear that you might one day make me your wife.  In your position, in the struggle you have been through, a wife would have been a burden that would have paralyzed you; above all, such a poor, miserable creature as myself, with no dot but her misery and that of her family.  But the conditions are no longer the same.  You are as miserable as I am, and more desperate.  In your own country, where you have only distant relatives who are nothing to you, as they have not your education or ideas, desires or habits, what will become of you all alone with your 158 disappointment and regrets?  If you accept me, I will go with you; together, and loving each other, we cannot be unhappy anywhere.  When you come home fatigued you will find me with a smile; when you stay at home you will tell me your thoughts, and explain your work, and I will try to understand.  I have no fear of poverty, you know, and neither do I fear solitude.  Wherever we are together I shall be happy.  All that I ask of you