o dream rather than speak.

"Ah, he that invented this existence and made men was either blind or
very wicked. . . ."

"Olivier, I entreat you . . . if you ever have loved me, be quiet, do
not talk like that any more!"

He looked at her, leaning over him, she herself so pale that she looked
as if she were dying, too; and he was silent.

Then she seated herself in the armchair, close to the bed, and again
took the hand on the coverlet.

"Now I forbid you to speak," said she. "Do not stir, and think of me as
I think of you."

Again they looked at each other, motionless, joined together by the
burning contact of their hands. She pressed, with gentle movement, the
feverish hand she clasped, and he answered these calls by tightening
his fingers a little. Each pressure said something to them, evoked some
period of their finished past, revived in their memory the stagnant
recollections of their love. Each was a secret question, each was
a mysterious reply, sad questions and sad replies, those "do you
remembers?" of a bygone love.

Their minds, in this agonizing meeting, which might be the last,
traveled back through the years, through the whole history of their
passion; and nothing was audible in the room save the crackling of the
fire.

Suddenly, as if awakening from a dream, he said, with a start of terror:

"Your letters!"

"What? My letters?" she queried.

"I might have died without destroying them!"

"Oh, what does that matter to me? That is of no consequence now. Let
them find them and read them--I don't care!"

"I will not have that," he said. "Get up, Any; open the lowest drawer of
my desk, the large one; they are all there, all. You must take them and
throw them into the fire."

She did not move at all, but remained crouching, as if he had counseled
her to do something cowardly.

"Any, I entreat you!" he continued; "if you do not do this, you will
torture me, unnerve me, drive me mad. Think--they may fall into anyone's
hands, a notary, a servant, or even your husband. . . . I do not
wish. . . ."

She rose, still hesitating, and repeating:

"No, that is too hard, too cruel! I feel as if you were compelling me to
burn both our hearts!"

He supplicated her, his face drawn with pain.

Seeing him suffer thus, she resigned herself and walked toward the desk.
On opening the drawer, she found it filled to the edge with a thick
packet of letters, piled one on top of another, and she recognized on
all