Chapter IX: Part II: And Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves (6)

Then she seemed to grow stronger, and replied:

“Now, my dear, yes, I see.”

She raised her two arms before her, and made as if to point to some spot beyond me, repeating still more distinctly:

“Yes, I see.”

She fell back then. For a second I thought it was to rest, or perhaps, to sleep. Filled with an inexpressible anguish, I leaned closer over her. And I realised that she was, in fact, sleeping, that it was her eternal sleep.

“It is so simple,” she had said.

I closed her eyelids, with their long lashes, on that invisible world which she had seen, and her face took on immediately that ineffable serenity with which death stamps the purest things in life, the most divine. Overcome by such calm and peace, I knelt involuntarily and prayed. Her gentleness had entered into me; her force communicated itself to me.

It was only a little later that I faced despair, and all that ferment of revolt which rises in us after such misfortune. But there, alone, in her room, for a few moments I was what she would have wished me to be.

When Mme. Mairieux and the maid came and told me it was time to dress her, they hesitated between two of her last gowns, the white and gold, or the blue and gold, that she had worn when we went out together.

“No, no,” I said to them, “not those.”

And I went myself to look for the woollen dress which she had worn the day of our betrothal--which I had one day ridiculed. Luxury had killed her. It should not constrain her in her tomb. She had come to me in all simplicity, and I had not understood her. I myself had crushed her.

They were astonished at my choice.

“No, please,” I said. “She would have wanted this one. We must do as she would have liked.”

* * *

Oh, my love, whom I so cruelly tortured, even in Death you bear within you that peace which, living, you held out to me with expiating hands.