hat if
she considered it her only possible salvation, it was because she did
not have it.

"Charity? They say that it makes us forget everything. Oh, yes, to go
distributing alms on the snowy streets, in a great fur cloak," she
murmured and made a tired gesture, while the lover and I felt the
shiver of the cold rainy evening and of all the winters past and yet to
come.

"All that is diversion, deception. It does not alter the truth a
particle. We shall die, we are going to die."

She stopped crying, dried her eyes and assumed a tone so positive and
calm that it gave the impression that she was leaving the subject.

"I want to ask you a question. Answer me frankly. Have you ever
dared, dear, even in the depths of your heart, to set a date, a date
relatively far off, but exact and absolute, with four figures, and to
say, 'No matter how old I shall live to be, on that day I shall be
dead--while everything else will go on, and little by little my empty
place will be destroyed or filled again?'"

The directness of her question disturbed him. But it seemed to me that
he tried most to avoid giving her a reply that would heighten her
obsession.

And all at once, she remembered something he had once said to her, and
cleverly reminded him of it so as to close his mouth in advance and
torture herself still more.

"Do you remember? One evening, by lamplight. I was looking through a
book. You were watching me. You came to me, you knelt down and put
your arms around my waist, and laid your head in my lap. There were
tears in your eyes. I can still hear you. 'I am thinking,' you said,
'that this moment will never come again. I am thinking that you are
going to change, to die, and go away. I am thinking so truly, so
hotly, how precious these moments are, how precious you are, you who
will never again be just what you are now, and I adore your ineffable
presence as it is now.' You looked at my hand, you found it small and
white, and you said it was an extraordinary treasure, which would
disappear. Then you repeated, 'I adore you,' in a voice which trembled
so, that I have never heard anything truer or more beautiful, for you
were right as a god is right.

"Alas!" he said.

He saw the tears in her eyes. Then he bowed his head. When he lifted
it again, I had a vague intuition that he would know what to answer,
but had not yet formulated how to say it.

"Poor creatures, a brief existence, a few stray thoug