re herself from his embrace, after promising and repeating her
promise to come early the next day and stay longer. Formerly, also, she
was calm when she left him, not thinking of his health, nor asking
herself how she would find him at their next meeting, strong and
powerful, as sound in body as in mind. On the contrary, now she worried
herself, wondering how she would find him on the occasion of each visit.
Would the sadness, melancholy, and dejection still remain? Would he be
thinner and paler? It was her care, her anguish, to try to divine the
causes of the change in him, which manifested itself as strongly in his
sentiments as in his person. Was it not truly extraordinary that he was
more grave and uneasy now that his life was assured than during the hard
times when he was so worried that he never knew what the morrow would
bring? He had obtained the position that his ambition coveted; he had
sufficient money for his wants; he admitted that his experiments had
succeeded beyond his expectations; the essays that he published on his
experiments were loudly discussed, praised by some, contested by others;
it seemed that he had attained his object; and he was sad, discontented,
unhappy, more tormented than when he exhausted himself with efforts,
without other support than his will. At last, when frightened to see him
thus, she questioned him as to how he felt, he became angry, and answered
brutally--

"Ill? Why do you think that I am--ill? Am I not better able than any one
to know how I am? I am overworked, that is all; and as my life of
privation does not permit me to repair my forces, I have become anaemic;
it is not serious. It is strange, truly, that you ask for explanations of
what is natural. Count the teeth of the polytechnicians and look at their
hair after their examinations, and tell me what you think of them. Why do
you think anything else is the matter with me? One cannot expend one's
self with impunity; that would be too good. Everything must be paid for
in this world."

She was obliged to believe that he was right and understood his
condition; however, she could not help worrying. She knew nothing of
medicine; she did not know the meaning of the medical terms he used, but
she found that this was not sufficient to explain all--neither his
roughness of temper and excess of anger without reason, any more than his
sudden tenderness, his weakness and dejection, his preoccupation and
absence of mind.

She disc