Therese said again: 

“And I, who feared to grow old in your eyes, for fear our beautiful love should end!  It would have been better if it had never come.  Yes, it would be better if I had not been born.  What a presentiment was that which came to me, when a child, under the lindens of Joinville, before the marble nymphs!  I wished to die then.”

Her arms fell, and clasping her hands she lifted her eyes; her wet glance threw a light in the shadows.

“Is there not a way of my making you feel that what I am saying to you is true?  That never since I have been yours, never—­But how could I?  The very idea of it seems horrible, absurd.  Do you know me so little?”

He shook his head sadly.  “I do not know you.”

She questioned once more with her eyes all the objects in the room.

“But then, what we have been to each other was vain, useless.  Men and women break themselves against one another; they do not mingle.”

She revolted.  It was not possible that he should not feel what he was to her.  And, in the ardor of her love, she threw herself on him and smothered him with kisses and tears.  He forgot everything, and took her in his arms—­sobbing, weak, yet happy—­and clasped her close with the fierceness of desire.  With her head leaning back against the pillow, she smiled through her tears.  Then, brusquely he disengaged himself.

“I do not see you alone.  I see the other with you always.”  She looked at him, dumb, indignant, desperate.  Then, feeling that all was indeed at an end, she cast around her a surprised glance of her unseeing eyes, and went slowly away.

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