d not passed ere she was again following
the expression of this man's face with tortured and jealous attention,
watching every stage of his suffering. She could ignore nothing, herself
enduring all the pain that she guessed at in him; and Annette's constant
presence reminded her at every moment of the day of the hopelessness of
her efforts.

Everything oppressed her at the same time--her age and her mourning.
Her active, intelligent, and ingenious coquetry, which all her life had
given her triumph, found itself paralyzed by that black uniform which
marked her pallor and the change in her features, while it rendered the
adolescence of her daughter absolutely dazzling. The time seemed far
away, though it was quite recent, when, on Annette's return to Paris,
she had proudly sought similar toilets which at that time were favorable
to her. Now she had a furious longing to tear from her body those
vestments of death which made her ugly and tortured her.

If she had felt that all the resources of elegance were at her service,
if she had been able to choose and use delicately shaded stuffs, in
harmony with her coloring, which would have lent a studied power to her
fading charms, as captivating as the inert grace of her daughter, she
would no doubt have known how to remain still the more charming.

She knew so well the influences of the fever-giving costume of
evening, and the soft sensuousness of morning attire, of the disturbing
_deshabille_ worn at breakfast with intimate friends, which lend to a
woman until noontime a sort of reminiscence of her rising, the material
and warm impression of the bed and of her perfumed room!

But what could she attempt under that sepulchral robe, that convict's
dress, which must cover her for a whole year? A year! She must remain
a year imprisoned in that black attire, inactive and vanquished. For a
whole year she would feel herself growing old, day by day, hour by hour,
minute by minute, under that sheath of crape! What would she be in a
year if her poor ailing body continued to alter thus under the anguish
of her soul?

These thoughts never left her, and spoiled for her everything she might
have enjoyed, turned into sadness things that would have given her joy,
leaving her not a pleasure, a contentment, or a gaiety intact. She was
agitated incessantly by an exasperating need to shake off this weight of
misery that crushed her, for without this tormenting obsession she would
still have be