last from this sad tete-a-tete.

As she tried to draw her hand from Olivier's, he pressed it, uttering
a deep sigh! Then she resigned herself to wait, so that she should not
trouble him.

The fire was dying out on the hearth, under the black ashes of the
letters; two candles went out; some pieces of furniture cracked.

All was silent in the house; everything seemed dead except a tall
Flemish clock on the stairs, which regularly chimed the hour, the
half hour, and the quarter, singing the march of time in the night,
modulating it in divers tones.

The Countess, motionless, felt an intolerable terror rising in her
soul. Nightmare assailed her; fearful thoughts filled her mind; and she
thought she could feel that Olivier's fingers were growing cold within
her own. Was that true? No, certainly not. But whence had come that
sensation of inexpressible, frozen contact? She roused herself, wild
with terror, to look at his face. It was relaxed, impassive, inanimate,
indifferent to all misery, suddenly soothed by the Eternal Oblivion.

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