“So you are going on a long journey?” she asked.

He sat facing her, motionless, with anguish on his face. Outwardly she was very calm, only there was a sadness in her look and in her voice. In her white dress, with the girdle falling before her feet, she lay back among the three pillows of the rose-moirÉ sofa; the tips of her little slippers were buried in the white sheepskin rug. On the table before her lay a great bouquet of loose roses, pink, white and yellow, bound together with a broad riband. He had brought them for her and she had not yet placed them. There was a great calm about her; the exquisite atmosphere of the boudoir seemed unchanged.

“Tell me, am I not paining you severely?” he asked, with the anguish in his eyes, the eyes which she now knew so well.

She smiled:

“No,” she said. “I will be honest with you. I have suffered, but I suffer no longer. I have struggled with myself for the second time and I have conquered myself. Will you believe me?”

“If you knew the remorse that I feel....”

She rose and went to him:

“What for?” she asked, in a clear voice. “Because you read me and gave me happiness?”

“Did I?”

“Have you forgotten?”

“No,” he said, “but I thought....”

“What?”

“I don’t know; I thought that you would ... would suffer so ... and I ... I cursed myself!...”

She shook her head gently, with smiling disapproval:

“For shame!” she said. “Do not blaspheme!...”

“Can you forgive me?”

“I have nothing to forgive. Listen to me. Swear to me that you believe me, that you believe that you have given me happiness and that I am not suffering.”

“I ... I swear.”

“I trust that you are not swearing this merely to satisfy my wish.”

“You have been the highest thing in my life,” he said, gently.

A rapture shot through her soul.

“Tell me only....” she began.

“What?”

“Tell me if you believe that I, I, I ... shall always remain the highest thing in your life.”

She stood before him, tall, in her clinging white. She seemed to shed radiance; never had he seen her so beautiful.

“I am certain of that,” he said. “Certain, oh, certain!... My God, how can I convey the certainty of it to you?”

“But I believe you, I believe you!” she exclaimed.

She laughed a laugh of rapture. In her soul a sun seemed to be shooting forth rays on every side. She placed her arm tenderly about his neck and kissed his forehead with a chaste caress.

For one moment he seemed to forget everything. He too rose, took her in his arms, almost savagely, and clasped her suddenly to him, as if he were about to crush her against his breast. She just caught sight of his sad eyes; then she saw nothing more, blinded by the kisses of his mouth, which scorched her whole face as though with sparks of fire. With the sun-rapture of her soul was mingled a bliss of earth, a yielding to the violence of his embrace. But the thought flashed across her of what she would lose if she yielded. She released herself, put him away and said:

“And now ... go.”

He felt stunned; he understood that he had no choice:

“Yes, yes, I am going,” he said. “I may write to you, may I not?”

She nodded yes, with her smile:

“Write to me, I shall write to you too,” she said. “Let me always hear from you....”

“Then these are not to be the last words between us? This ... this ... is not the end?”

“No.”

“Thank you. Good-bye, mevrouw, good-bye ... Cecile. Ah, if you knew what this moment costs me!”

“It must be. It cannot be otherwise. Go, go. You must go. Do go....”

She gave him her hand again, for the last time. A moment later he was gone.

She looked about her strangely, with bewildered eyes, with hands locked together:

“Go, go....” she repeated, like one raving.

Then she noticed the roses. With something like a faint scream she sank down before the little table and buried her face in his gift, until the thorns wounded her face. The pain—two drops of blood which fell from her forehead—brought her back to her senses. Standing before the Venetian mirror hanging over her writing-table, she wiped away the red spots with her handkerchief.

“Happiness!” she stammered to herself. “His happiness! The highest thing in his life! So he knew happiness, though short it was. But now ... now he suffers, now he will suffer again, as he did before. The remembrance of happiness cannot do everything. Ah, if it could only do that, then everything would be well, everything!... I wish for nothing more, I have had my life, my own life, my own happiness; I now have my children; I now belong to them. To him I must no longer be anything....”

She turned away from the mirror and sat down on the settee, as though tired with a great space traversed, and she closed her eyes, as though blinded with too great a light. She folded her hands together, like one in prayer; her face beamed in its fatigue, from smile to smile.

“Happiness!” she repeated, faltering between her smiles. “The highest thing in his life! O my God, happiness! I thank Thee, O God, I thank Thee!...”

THE END