k, but in vain--she
could not utter a sound. She bent her head, and I withdrew. In spite of
the painful agitation, which I had felt to the full as youth can feel, I
fell asleep, tired out with my forced march.

It was late in the night when I was awakened by the grating sound of
curtain rings drawn sharply over the metal rods. There sat the Countess
at the foot of my bed. The light from a lamp set on my table fell full
upon her face.

"Is it really true, monsieur, quite true?" she asked. "I do not know
how I can live after that awful blow which struck me down a little while
since; but just now I feel calm. I want to know everything."

"What calm!" I said to myself as I saw the ghastly pallor of her face
contrasting with her brown hair, and heard the guttural tones of her
voice. The havoc wrought in her drawn features filled me with dumb
amazement.

Those few hours had bleached her; she had lost a woman's last glow of
autumn color. Her eyes were red and swollen, nothing of their beauty
remained, nothing looked out of them save her bitter and exceeding
grief; it was as if a gray cloud covered the place through which the sun
had shone.

I gave her the story of the accident in a few words, without laying too
much stress on some too harrowing details. I told her about our first
day's journey, and how it had been filled with recollections of her and
of love. And she listened eagerly, without shedding a tear, leaning her
face towards me, as some zealous doctor might lean to watch any change
in a patient's face. When she seemed to me to have opened her whole
heart to pain, to be deliberately plunging herself into misery with the
first delirious frenzy of despair, I caught at my opportunity, and told
her of the fears that troubled the poor dying man, told her how and
why it was that he had given me this fatal message. Then her tears were
dried by the fires that burned in the dark depths within her. She grew
even paler. When I drew the letters from beneath my pillow and held them
out to her, she took them mechanically; then, trembling from head to
foot, she said in a hollow voice:

"And _I_ burned all his letters!--I have nothing of him left!--Nothing!
nothing!"

She struck her hand against her forehead.

"Madame----" I began.

She glanced at me in the convulsion of grief.

"I cut this from his head, this lock of his hair."

And I gave her that last imperishable token that had been a very part
of him she loved. Ah!