we must brighten up the fire."

She threw a small log on the hearth, and then, instead of resuming her
seat, she took a cushion from the sofa, and placing it before the
chimney, threw herself upon it, and leaned her elbow on Saniel's knee.

"And now?" she repeated, her eyes raised to his.

"Now I suppose the only thing for me to do is to return to Auvergne and
become a country doctor."

"My God! is it possible?" she murmured in a tone that surprised Saniel.
If there was sadness in this cry, there was also a sentiment that he did
not understand.

"On leaving the school I could continue to live at the Hotel du Senat,
and, while giving lessons, prepare my 'concours'; now, after having
reached a certain position, can I return to this life of poverty and
study? My creditors, who have fallen on me here, will harass me, and my
competitors will mock my misery--which is caused by my vices. They will
think that I dishonor the Faculty, and I shall be rebuffed. Neither
doctor of the hospitals nor fellow, I shall be reduced to nothing but a
doctor of the quarter. Of what use is it? The effort has been made here;
you see how it has succeeded."

"Then you mean to go?"

"Not without sorrow and despair, since it will be our separation, the
renouncement of all the hopes on which I have lived for ten years, the
abandonment of my work, death itself. You see now why, in spite of your
gayety, I have not been able to hide my preoccupation from you. The more
charming you were, the more I felt how dear you are, and the greater my
despair at the thought of separation."

"Why should we separate?"

"What do you mean?"

She turned toward him.

"To go with you. You must acknowledge that until this moment I have never
spoken to you of marriage, and never have I let the thought appear that
you might one day make me your wife. In your position, in the struggle
you have been through, a wife would have been a burden that would have
paralyzed you; above all, such a poor, miserable creature as myself, with
no dot but her misery and that of her family. But the conditions are no
longer the same. You are as miserable as I am, and more desperate. In
your own country, where you have only distant relatives who are nothing
to you, as they have not your education or ideas, desires or habits, what
will become of you all alone with your 158 disappointment and regrets? If
you accept me, I will go with you; together, and loving each other, we
cannot be