thought; "why did he
not tell me he was going out again? Why did he not ask me to come with
him? He knows very well that it would have made me so happy. What is he
thinking of now?"

This idea that he had not wished to have her with him on his walk, that
he had preferred to go out alone this beautiful night, alone, with a
cigar in his mouth, for she could see its fiery-red point--alone, when
he might have given her the joy of taking her with him; this idea that
he had not continual need of her, that he did not desire her always,
created within her soul a new fermentation of bitterness.

She was about to close the window, that she might not see him or be
tempted to call to him, when he raised his eyes and saw her.

"Well, are you star-gazing, Countess?"

"Yes," she answered. "You also, as it appears."

"Oh, I am simply smoking."

She could not resist the desire to ask: "Why did you not tell me you
were going out?"

"I only wanted to smoke a cigar. I am coming in now."

"Then good-night, my friend."

"Good-night, Countess."

She retired as far as her low chair, sat down in it and wept; and her
maid, who was called to assist her to bed, seeing her red eyes said with
compassion:

"Ah, Madame is going to make a sad face for herself again to-morrow."

The Countess slept badly; she was feverish and had nightmare. As soon as
she awoke she opened her window and her curtains to look at herself
in the mirror. Her features were drawn, her eyelids swollen, her skin
looked yellow; and she felt such violent grief because of this that
she wished to say she was ill and to keep her bed, so that she need not
appear until evening.

Then, suddenly, the necessity to go away entered her mind, to depart
immediately, by the first train, to quit the country, where one could
see too clearly by the broad light of the fields the ineffaceable marks
of sorrow and of life itself. In Paris one lives in the half shadow
of apartments, where heavy curtains, even at noontime, admit only a
softened light. She would herself become beautiful again there, with the
pallor one should have in that discreetly softened light. Then Annette's
face rose before her eyes--so fresh and pink, with slightly disheveled
hair, as when she was playing tennis. She understood then the unknown
anxiety from which her soul had suffered. She was not jealous of her
daughter's beauty! No, certainly not; but she felt, she acknowledged for
the first time that she must n