ace of that attempt was
frightful.

When she was beside the bed, she put both hands gently on one of
Olivier's, which lay along his body, and stammered: "Oh, my poor
friend!"

"It is nothing," said he, in a low tone, without moving his head.

She now looked at him closely, frightened at the change in him. He was
so pale that he seemed no longer to have a drop of blood under his skin.
His hollow cheeks seemed to have been sucked in from the interior of his
face, and his eyes were sunken as if drawn by a string from within.

He saw the terror of his friend, and sighed: "Here I am in a fine
state!"

"How did it happen?" she asked, looking at him with fixed gaze.

He was making a great effort to speak, and his whole face twitched with
pain.

"I was not looking about me--I was thinking of something else--something
very different--oh, yes!--and an omnibus knocked me down and ran over my
abdomen."

As she listened she saw the accident, and shaking with terror, she
asked: "Did you bleed?"

"No. I am only a little bruised--a little crushed."

"Where did it happen?" she inquired.

"I do not know exactly," he answered in a very low voice; "it was far
away from here."

The physician rolled up an armchair, and the Countess sank into it. The
Count remained standing at the foot of the bed, repeating between
his teeth: "Oh, my poor friend! my poor friend! What a frightful
misfortune!"

And he was indeed deeply grieved, for he loved Olivier very much.

"But where did it happen?" the Countess repeated.

"I know hardly anything about it myself, or rather I do not understand
it at all," the physician replied. "It was at the Gobelins, almost
outside of Paris! At least, the cabman that brought him home declared to
me that he took him in at a pharmacy of that quarter, to which someone
had carried him, at nine o'clock in the evening!" Then, leaning toward
Olivier, he asked: "Did the accident really happen near the Gobelins?"

Bertin closed his eyes, as if to recollect; then murmured: "I do not
know."

"But where were you going?"

"I do not remember now. I was walking straight before me."

A groan that she could not stifle came from the Countess's lips; then
oppressed with a choking that stopped her breathing a few seconds, she
drew out her handkerchief, covered her eyes, and wept bitterly.

She knew--she guessed! Something intolerable, overwhelming had just
fallen on her heart--remorse for not keeping Olivier near he