rth at Ruril,
and got home late for breakfast.

As she was very hungry after this long walk, she ate heartily with
the pleasurable appetite of people who have taken exercise.

Her mother, happy to see her so hungry, and now feeling tranquil
herself, said to her as they left the table:

"All our friends are coming to spend Sunday with us. I have invited
the Prince, the Chevalier, and Monsieur de Belvigne."

Yvette turned a little pale, but did not reply. She went out almost
immediately, reached the railway station, and took a ticket for
Paris. And during all the afternoon, she went from druggist to
druggist, buying from each one a few drops of chloroform. She came
back in the evening with her pockets full of little bottles.

She began the same system on the following day, and by chance found
a chemist who gave her, at one stroke, a quarter of a liter. She did
not go out on Saturday; it was a lowering and sultry day; she passed
it entirely on the terrace, stretched on a long wicker-chair.

She thought of almost nothing, very resolute and very calm. She put
on the next morning, a blue costume which was very becoming to her,
wishing to look well. Then looking at herself in the glass, she
suddenly said:

"To-morrow, I shall be dead." And a peculiar shudder passed over her
body. "Dead! I shall speak no more, think no more, no one will see
me more, and I shall never see anything again."

And she gazed attentively at her countenance, as if she had never
observed it, examining especially her eyes, discovering a thousand
things in herself, a secret character in her physiognomy which she
had not known before, astonished to see herself, as if she had
opposite her a strange person, a new friend.

She said to herself: "It is I, in the mirror, there. How queer it is
to look at oneself. But without the mirror we would never know
ourselves. Everybody else would know how we look, and we ourselves
would know nothing."

She placed the heavy braids of her thick hair over her breast,
following with her glance all her gestures, all her poses, and all
her movements. "How pretty I am!" she thought. "Tomorrow I shall be
dead, there, upon my bed." She looked at her bed, and seemed to see
herself stretched out, white as the sheets.

Dead! In a week she would be nothing but dust, to dust returned! A
horrible anguish oppressed her heart. The bright sunlight fell in
floods upon the fields, and the soft morning air came in at the
window