rated box.

They were alone, the young man and the young wife, beside him who was no
more. They sat without speaking, thinking and watching.

George, whom the darkness rendered uneasy in presence of the corpse,
kept his eyes on this persistently. His eye and his mind were both
attracted and fascinated by this fleshless visage, which the vacillating
light caused to appear yet more hollow. That was his friend Charles
Forestier, who was chatting with him only the day before! What a strange
and fearful thing was this end of a human being! Oh! how he recalled the
words of Norbert de Varenne haunted by the fear of death: "No one ever
comes back." Millions on millions would be born almost identical, with
eyes, a nose, a mouth, a skull and a mind within it, without he who lay
there on the bed ever reappearing again.

For some years he had lived, eaten, laughed, loved, hoped like all the
world. And it was all over for him all over for ever. Life; a few days,
and then nothing. One is born, one grows up, one is happy, one waits,
and then one dies. Farewell, man or woman, you will not return again to
earth. Plants, beast, men, stars, worlds, all spring to life, and then
die to be transformed anew. But never one of them comes back--insect,
man, nor planet.

A huge, confused, and crushing sense of terror weighed down the soul of
Duroy, the terror of that boundless and inevitable annihilation
destroying all existence. He already bowed his head before its menace.
He thought of the flies who live a few hours, the beasts who live a few
days, the men who live a few years, the worlds which live a few
centuries. What was the difference between one and the other? A few more
days' dawn that was all.

He turned away his eyes in order no longer to have the corpse before
them. Madame Forestier, with bent head, seemed also absorbed in painful
thoughts. Her fair hair showed so prettily with her pale face, that a
feeling, sweet as the touch of hope flitted through the young fellow's
breast. Why grieve when he had still so many years before him? And he
began to observe her. Lost in thought she did not notice him. He said to
himself, "That, though, is the only good thing in life, to love, to hold
the woman one loves in one's arms. That is the limit of human
happiness."

What luck the dead man had had to meet such an intelligent and charming
companion! How had they become acquainted? How ever had she agreed on
her part to marry that poor and co