fix bathed in tears. "My God!" she
cried; "if this be the cost of a murmur, I will never complain again."

"You have left him!" she said on seeing me.

"I heard you moaning, and I was frightened."

"Oh, I!" she said; "I am well."

Wishing to be certain that Monsieur de Mortsauf was asleep she came
down with me; by the light of the lamp we looked at him. The count was
weakened by the loss of blood and was more drowsy than asleep; his hands
picked the counterpane and tried to draw it over him.

"They say the dying do that," she whispered. "Ah! if he were to die of
this illness, that I have caused, never will I marry again, I swear it,"
she said, stretching her hand over his head with a solemn gesture.

"I have done all I could to save him," I said.

"Oh, you!" she said, "you are good; it is I who am guilty."

She stooped to that discolored brow, wiped the perspiration from it and
laid a kiss there solemnly; but I saw, not without joy, that she did it
as an expiation.

"Blanche, I am thirsty," said the count in a feeble voice.

"You see he knows me," she said giving him to drink.

Her accent, her affectionate manner to him seemed to me to take the
feelings that bound us together and immolate them to the sick man.

"Henriette," I said, "go and rest, I entreat you."

"No more Henriette," she said, interrupting me with imperious haste.

"Go to bed if you would not be ill. Your children, _he himself_ would
order you to be careful; it is a case where selfishness becomes a
virtue."

"Yes," she said.

She went away, recommending her husband to my care by a gesture which
would have seemed like approaching delirium if childlike grace had not
been mingled with the supplicating forces of repentance. But the scene
was terrible, judged by the habitual state of that pure soul; it alarmed
me; I feared the exaltation of her conscience. When the doctor
came again, I revealed to him the nature of my pure Henriette's
self-reproach. This confidence, made discreetly, removed Monsieur
Origet's suspicions, and enabled him to quiet the distress of that noble
soul by telling her that in any case the count had to pass through this
crisis, and that as for the nut-tree, his remaining there had done more
good than harm by developing the disease.

For fifty-two days the count hovered between life and death. Henriette
and I each watched twenty-six nights. Undoubtedly, Monsieur de Mortsauf
owed his life to our nursing and to the caref