ath; but no face of all those she remembered had
ever assumed, as the end drew near, that distressing expression of a
face retiring within itself and closing the doors.

Enveloped in her suffering, Germinie maintained her savage, rigid,
self-contained, impenetrable demeanor. She was as immovable as bronze.
Mademoiselle, as she looked at her, asked herself what it could be that
she brooded over thus without moving; whether it was her life rising in
revolt, the dread of death, or a secret remorse for something in her
past. Nothing external seemed to affect the sick woman. She was no
longer conscious of things about her. Her body became indifferent to
everything, did not ask to be relieved, seemed not to desire to be
cured. She complained of nothing, found no pleasure or diversion in
anything. Even her longing for affection had left her. She no longer
made any motion to bestow or invite a caress, and every day something
human left her body, which seemed to be turning to stone. Often she
would bury herself in profound silence that made one expect a
heart-rending shriek or word; but after glancing about the room, she
would say nothing and begin again to stare fixedly, vacantly, at the
same spot in space.

When mademoiselle returned from the friend's house with whom she dined,
she would find Germinie in the dark, sunk in an easy-chair with her legs
stretched out upon a chair, her head hanging forward on her breast, and
so profoundly absorbed that sometimes she did not hear the door open. As
she walked forward into the room it seemed to Mademoiselle de Varandeuil
as if she were breaking in upon a ghastly _tete-a-tete_ between Disease
and the Shadow of Death, wherein Germinie was already seeking, in the
terror of the Invisible, the blindness of the grave and the darkness of
death.

LXIII

Throughout the month of October, Germinie obstinately refused to take to
her bed. Each day, however, she was weaker and more helpless than the
day before. She was hardly able to ascend the flight of stairs that led
to her sixth floor, dragging herself along by the railing. One day she
fell on the stairs: the other servants picked her up and carried her to
her chamber. But that did not stop her; the next day she went downstairs
again, with the fitful gleam of strength that invalids commonly have in
the morning. She prepared mademoiselle's breakfast, made a pretence of
working, and kept moving about the apartment, clinging to the cha