ons he had tried to summon up.
He could remember nothing, however; he was truly in a happy state of
childhood. He fancied that he had been born the day before.

'Oh! I am not strong enough yet,' he said. 'My furthest recollection is
of a bed which burned me all over, my head rolled about on a pillow
like a pan of live coals, and my feet wore away with perpetual rubbing
against each other. I was very bad, I know. It seemed as if I were
having my body changed, as if I were being taken all to pieces, and put
together again like some broken machine.'

He laughed at this simile, and continued: 'I shall be all new again. My
illness has given me a fine cleaning. But what was it you were asking
me? No, nobody was there. I was suffering all by myself at the bottom
of a black hole. Nobody, nobody. And beyond that, nothing--I can see
nothing.... Let me be your child, will you? You shall teach me to walk.
I can see nothing else but you now. I care for nothing but you.... I
can't remember, I tell you. I came, you took me, and that is all.'

And restfully, pettingly, he said once more: 'How warm your hand is now!
it is as nice as the sun. Don't let us talk any more. It makes me hot.'

A quivering silence fell from the blue ceiling of the large room. The
spirit lamp had just gone out, and from the kettle came a finer and
finer thread of steam. Albine and Serge, their heads side by side upon
the pillow, gazed at the large calico curtains drawn across the windows.
Serge's eyes, especially, were attracted to them as to the very source
of light, in which he sought to steep himself, as in diluted sunshine
fitted to his weakness. He could tell that the sun lay behind that
yellower gleam upon one corner of the curtain, and that sufficed to make
him feel himself again. Meanwhile a far-off rustle of leaves came upon
his listening ear, and against the right-hand window the clean-cut
greenish shadow of a lofty bough brought him disturbing thoughts of the
forest which he could feel to be near him.

'Would you like me to open the curtains?' asked Albine, misunderstanding
his steady gaze.

'No, no,' he hastily replied.

'It's a fine day; you would see the sunlight and the trees.'

'No, please don't.... I don't want to see anything outside. That bough
there tires me with its waving and its rising, as if it was alive. Leave
your hand here, I will go to sleep. All is white now. It's so nice.'

And then he calmly fell asleep, while Albine watc