With a spontaneous, almost unthinking, movement he took the copy, closed it, folded it, and slipped it into his pocket with the swiftness of a thief.

The Countess entered.  As soon as she saw Olivier’s convulsed and livid face, she guessed that he had reached the limit of suffering.

She hastened toward him, with an impulse from all her poor soul, so agonized also, and from her poor body, that was itself so wounded.  Throwing her hands upon his shoulders, and plunging her glance into the depths of his eyes, she said: 

“Oh, how unhappy you are!”

This time he did not deny it; his throat swelled with a spasm of pain, and he stammered: 

“Yes—­yes—­yes!”

She felt that he was near weeping, and led him into the darkest corner of the drawing-room, toward two armchairs hidden by a small screen of antique silk.  They sat down behind this slight embroidered wall, veiled also by the gray shadow of a rainy day.

She resumed, pitying him, deeply moved by his grief: 

“My poor Olivier, how you suffer!”

He leaned his white head on the shoulder of his friend.

“More than you believe!” he said.

“Oh, I knew it!  I have felt it all.  I saw it from the beginning and watched it grow.”

He answered as if she had accused him:  “It is not my faulty, Any.”

“I know it well; I do not reproach you for it.”

And softly, turning a little, she laid her lips on one of Olivier’s eyes, where she found a bitter tear.

She started, as if she had just tasted a drop of despair, and repeated several times: 

“Ah, poor friend—­poor friend—­poor friend!”

Then after a moment of silence she added:  “It is the fault of our hearts, which never have grown old.  I feel that my own is full of life!”

He tried to speak but could not, for now his sobs choked him.  She listened, as he leaned against her, to the struggle in his breast.  Then, seized by the selfish anguish of love, which had gnawed at her heart so long, she said in the agonized tone in which one realizes a horrible misfortune: 

“God! how you love her!”

Again he confessed:  “Ah, yes!  I love her!”

She reflected a few moments, then continued:  “You never have loved me thus?”

He did not deny it, for he was passing through one of those periods in which one speaks with absolute truth, and he murmured: 

“No, I was too young then.”

She was surprised.

“Too young?  Why?”

“Because life was too sweet.  It is only at our age that one loves despairingly.”

“Does the love you feel for her resemble that which you felt for me?” the Countess asked.

“Yes and no—­and yet it is almost the same thing.  I have loved you as much as anyone can love a woman.  As for her, I love her just as I loved you, since she is yourself; but this love has become something irresistible, destroying, stronger than death.  I belong to it as a burning house belongs to the fire.”