es towards each other by this mutual and free
agreement much more than by the 'Yes' uttered in the presence of the
Mayor's sash.

"I say that, if they are both honorable persons, their union must be
more intimate, more real, more healthy, than if all the sacraments had
consecrated it.

"This woman risks everything. And it is exactly because she knows it,
because she gives everything, her heart, her body, her soul, her
honor, her life, because she has foreseen all miseries, all dangers,
all catastrophies, because she dares to do a bold act, an intrepid
act, because she is prepared, determined to brave everything--her
husband who might kill her, and society which may cast her out. This
is why she is respectable in her conjugal infidelity, this is why her
lover, in taking her, must also have foreseen everything, and
preferred her to everything whatever may happen. I have nothing more
to say. I spoke in the beginning like a man of sense whose duty it was
to warn you; and now there is left in me only one man--the man who
loves you. Say, then, what am I to do!"

Radiant, she closed his mouth with her lips; she said to him in a low
tone:

"It is not true, darling! There is nothing the matter! My husband does
not suspect anything. But I wanted to see, I wanted to know, what you
would do. I wished for a New Year's gift--the gift of your
heart--another gift besides the necklace you have sent me. You have
given it to me. Thanks! Thanks!... God be thanked for the happiness
you have given me!"

BESIDE A DEAD MAN

He was slowly dying, as consumptives die. I saw him sitting down every
day at two o'clock under the windows of the hotel, facing the tranquil
sea on an open-air bench. He remained for some time without moving, in
the heat of the sun gazing mournfully at the Mediterranean. Every now
and then, he cast a glance at the lofty mountains with vaporous
summits which shuts in Mentone: then, with a very slow movement, he
crossed his long legs, so thin that they seemed two bones, around
which fluttered the cloth of his trousers, and he opened a book, which
was always the same. And then he did not stir any more, but read on,
read on with his eye and his mind; all his expiring body seemed to
read, all his soul plunged, lost itself, disappeared, in this book, up
to the hour when the cool air made him cough a little. Then, he got up
and re-entered the hotel.

He was a tall German, with fair beard, who breakfasted and din