ing:

"Oh! no, do not die. I need you to comfort me, to cure all the wounds the
other has inflicted on me."

But that is a mere poet's dream, one of the meetings that life can not
bring about.

Streets, more streets, then a square and a bridge whose lanterns make
another luminous bridge in the black water. Here is the river at last.
The mist of that damp, soft autumn evening causes all of this huge Paris,
entirely strange to her as it is, to appear to her like an enormous
confused mass, which her ignorance of the landmarks magnifies still more.
This is the place where she must die.

Poor little Desiree!

She recalls the country excursion which Frantz had organized for her.
That breath of nature, which she breathed that day for the first time,
falls to her lot again at the moment of her death. "Remember," it seems
to say to her; and she replies mentally, "Oh! yes, I remember."

She remembers only too well. When it arrives at the end of the quay,
which was bedecked as for a holiday, the furtive little shadow pauses at
the steps leading down to the bank.

Almost immediately there are shouts and excitement all along the quay:

"Quick--a boat--grappling-irons!" Boatmen and policemen come running from
all sides. A boat puts off from the shore with a lantern in the bow.

The flower-women awake, and, when one of them asks with a yawn what is
happening, the woman who keeps the cafe that crouches at the corner of
the bridge answers coolly:

"A woman just jumped into the river."

But no. The river has refused to take that child. It has been moved to
pity by so great gentleness and charm. In the light of the lanterns
swinging to and fro on the shore, a black group forms and moves away. She
is saved! It was a sand-hauler who fished her out. Policemen are carrying
her, surrounded by boatmen and lightermen, and in the darkness a hoarse
voice is heard saying with a sneer: "That water-hen gave me a lot of
trouble. You ought to see how she slipped through my fingers! I believe
she wanted to make me lose my reward." Gradually the tumult subsides, the
bystanders disperse, and the black group moves away toward a
police-station.

Ah! poor girl, you thought that it was an easy matter to have done with
life, to disappear abruptly. You did not know that, instead of bearing
you away swiftly to the oblivion you sought, the river would drive you
back to all the shame, to all the ignominy of unsuccessful suicide. First
of all, the st