happened, Gyp Labelle would go on having a good time. She could not be
extinguished. There was in her some virtue altogether apart from the
body--a blazing vitality, an unquenchable, burning spirit.

He felt his hatred of her wither before it.

"And 'e say: 'You dance ver' bad, Gyp, but you make me laugh. You go
on and dance to ze others.' For 'e know who I am. My poor parents
they make ze mistake. They think: ''Ere is such a ver' nice, good
little _bebe_, and so they call me after my _Maman_, who is ver' nice
and good too, and who love me ver' much--Marie--Marie Dubois."

She turned her head towards the old woman bending lower and lower over
her fine work, and, smiling at her, fell asleep.

He returned, one night, to the hospital in the hope of being able to
work in the laboratory, and instead, coming to her room, he went in.
The action was so unpremeditated and unmotivated that he had closed the
door before he knew what he had done. But the excuse he framed in his
confusion was never uttered, for he had the right to appear
dumbfounded. She sat, propped up like a painted wraith against a pile
of gorgeous cushions, and all about her was scattered a barbarous loot
of rings and bracelets, of strings of pearls, of unset stones, diamonds
and emeralds, heaped carelessly on the table at her side, and twinkling
like little malevolent eyes out of the creases of her coverlet.

The old woman wrote toilingly on a slip of paper. "Sh! This is ver'
solemn. I could not sleep, and so I make my testament." She put her
finger to her lips as though her whisper were only a part of a playful
mystery and beckoned him, and he went towards her, reluctant, yet
unresisting like a man hypnotized. He had a childish longing to touch
all that colour, to take up great handfuls of it and feel its warmth
and let it drip through his fingers. The death that stared out of her
painted face, the silence and grim austerity of her surroundings made
that display of magnificence a fantastic parable. The stones were the
life that was going from her. She picked up each one in turn and
caressed it, and held it to the light, remembering who knew what
escapade, what splendid, reckless days, what tragedy. And yet there
was no regret and surely no remorse in her farewell of them.

"_Ma Vieille_--she make a list of all. They will be sold--for ze
children of Paris--ze _gamins_--as I was--for a good time." She held
out her hand: "_C'est joli,