e was, how miraculously she still held on.

This tortured and condemned woman is all that has looked after me for
twenty years. For twenty years she took my hand before she took my
arm. She always prevented me from understanding that I was an orphan.
Delicate and small as I was for so long, she was taller and stronger
and better than I! And at this moment, which shows me the past again
in one glance, I remember that she beautified the affairs of my
childhood like an old magician; and my head goes lower as I think of
her untiring admiration for me. How she did love me! And she must
love me still, confusedly, if some glimmering light yet lasts in the
depths of her. What will become of me--all alone?

She was so sensitive, and so restless! A hundred details of her
vivacity come to life again in my eyes. Stupidly, I contemplate the
poker, the tongs, the big spoon--all the things she used to flourish as
she chattered. There they are--fallen, paralyzed, mute!

As in a dream I go back to the times when she talked and shouted, to
days of youth, to days of spring and of springtime dresses; and all the
while my gaze, piercing that gay and airy vision, settles on the dark
stain of the hand that lies there like the shadow of a hand, on the
sheet.

My eyes are jumbling things together. I see our garden in the first
fine days of the year; our garden--it is behind that wall--so narrow is
it that the reflected sunshine from our two windows dapples the whole
of it; so small that it only holds some pot-encaged plants, except for
the three currant bushes which have always been there. In the scarves
of the sun rays a bird--a robin--is hopping on the twigs like a rag
jewel. All dusty in the sunshine our red hound, Mirliton, is warming
himself. So gaunt is he you feel sure he must be a fast runner.
Certainly he runs after glimpsed rabbits on Sundays in the country, but
he never caught any. He never caught anything but fleas. When I lag
behind because of my littleness my aunt turns round, on the edge of the
footpath, and holds out her arms, and I run to her, and she stoops as I
come and calls me by my name.

* * * * * *

"Simon! Simon!"

A woman is here. I wrench myself from the dream which had come into
the room and taken solidity before me. I stand up; it is my cousin
Marie.

She offers me her hands among the candles which flutter by the bed. In
their poor starlight her face ap