ft, and veiled at times by slight mists.

Yvette thought: "I am going to die!" And her heart, swollen with
sobs, nearly bursting, almost suffocated her. She felt in her a need
of asking mercy from some one, of being saved, of being loved.

The voice of Servigny aroused her. He was telling an improper story,
which was constantly interrupted by bursts of laughter. The Marquise
herself laughed louder than the others.

"There is nobody like him for telling that sort of thing," she said,
laughing.

Yvette took the bottle, uncorked it, and poured a little of the
liquid on the cotton. A strong, sweet, strange odor arose; and as
she brought the piece of cotton to her lips, the fumes entered her
throat and made her cough.

Then shutting her mouth, she began to inhale it. She took in long
breaths of this deadly vapor, closing her eyes, and forcing herself
to stifle in her mind all thoughts, so that she might not reflect,
that she might know nothing more.

It seemed to her at first that her chest was growing larger, was
expanding, and that her soul, recently heavy and burdened with
grief, was becoming light, light, as if the weight which overwhelmed
her was lifted, wafted away. Something lively and agreeable
penetrated even to the extremities of her limbs, even to the tips of
her toes and fingers and entered her flesh, a sort of dreamy
intoxication, of soft fever. She saw that the cotton was dry, and
she was astonished that she was not already dead. Her senses seemed
more acute, more subtle, more alert. She heard the lowest whisper on
the terrace. Prince Kravalow was telling how he had killed an
Austrian general in a duel.

Then, further off, in the fields, she heard the noise of the night,
the occasional barkings of a dog, the short cry of the frogs, the
almost imperceptible rustling of the leaves.

She took the bottle again, and saturated once more the little piece
of wadding; then she began to breathe in the fumes again. For a few
moments she felt nothing; then that soft and soothing feeling of
comfort which she had experienced before enveloped her.

Twice she poured more chloroform upon the cotton, eager now for that
physical and mental sensation, that dreamy torpor, which bewildered
her soul.

It seemed to her that she had no more bones, flesh, legs, or arms.
The drug had gently taken all these away from her, without her
perceiving it. The chloroform had drawn away her body, leaving her
only her mind, more awake