undertaker will be here at
eight o'clock."

Duroy having sighed out the words, "Poor fellow," she, too, gave a long
sigh of heartrending resignation.

They did not look at the body so often now, already accustomed to the
idea of it, and beginning to mentally consent to the decease which but a
short time back had shocked and angered them--them who were mortals,
too. They no longer spoke, continuing to keep watch in befitting fashion
without going to sleep. But towards midnight Duroy dozed off the first.
When he woke up he saw that Madame Forestier was also slumbering, and
having shifted to a more comfortable position, he reclosed his eyes,
growling: "Confound it all, it is more comfortable between the sheets
all the same."

A sudden noise made him start up. The nurse was entering the room. It
was broad daylight. The young wife in the armchair in front of him
seemed as surprised as himself. She was somewhat pale, but still pretty,
fresh-looking, and nice, in spite of this night passed in a chair.

Then, having glanced at the corpse, Duroy started and exclaimed: "Oh,
his beard!" The beard had grown in a few hours on this decomposing flesh
as much as it would have in several days on a living face. And they
stood scared by this life continuing in death, as though in presence of
some fearful prodigy, some supernatural threat of resurrection, one of
these startling and abnormal events which upset and confound the mind.

They both went and lay down until eleven o'clock. Then they placed
Charles in his coffin, and at once felt relieved and soothed. They had
sat down face to face at lunch with an aroused desire to speak of the
livelier and more consolatory matters, to return to the things of life
again, since they had done with the dead. Through the wide-open window
the soft warmth of spring flowed in, bearing the perfumed breath of the
bed of pinks in bloom before the door.

Madame Forestier suggested a stroll in the garden to Duroy, and they
began to walk slowly round the little lawn, inhaling with pleasure the
balmy air, laden with the scent of pine and eucalyptus. Suddenly she
began to speak, without turning her head towards him, as he had done
during the night upstairs. She uttered her words slowly, in a low and
serious voice.

"Look here, my dear friend, I have deeply reflected already on what you
proposed to me, and I do not want you to go away without an answer.
Besides, I am neither going to say yes nor no. We w