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By Root 1491 0

was nearly one o’clock in the morning, and Nana and the count, in the big bed hung with Venetian lace, were not yet asleep. He had returned that evening, after sulking for three days. The room, which was only feebly lighted by a lamp, was wrapped in silence, and felt warm and moist with an odor of love; whilst the white lacquer furniture, inlaid with silver, was only vaguely visible. A drawn curtain half hid the bed in a flood of shadow. There was a sigh, and then the sound of a kiss broke the silence; and Nana, gliding from under the clothes, remained seated for an instance on the edge of the bed, with her legs bare. The count, his head fallen back on the pillow, continued in the shadow.

“Darling, do you believe in God?” she asked, after a moment of reflection, with a grave look on her face, and filled with a religious terror on leaving her lover’s arms.

Ever since the morning she had complained of an uneasiness, and all her stupid ideas, as she called them, ideas of death and hell, had been secretly tormenting her. On some nights, childish frights and the most horrible fancies seized upon her, with her eyes open. She resumed,

“Do you think I shall go to heaven?”

And she shivered, whilst the count, surprised at these singular questions at such a time, felt all his religious remorse awakened within him. But, with her night-dress slipped from her shoulders, her hair hanging loose about her, she fell upon his chest, sobbing and clinging to him.

“I’m afraid to die—I’m afraid to die.”

He had all the difficulty in the world to get free from her. He himself was afraid of succumbing to the attack of madness from which that woman, pressed to his body in the contagious fear of the invisible, was suffering; and he reasoned with her. She was in very good health, all she had to do was to conduct herself well, to merit pardon hereafter. But she shook her head. No doubt she never did harm to anyone; she even always wore a medal of the Virgin, which she showed him hanging to a red ribbon between her breasts; only it was settled beforehand, all women, who, without being married, had anything to do with men, went to hell. Fragments of her catechism were returning to her. Ah! if one only knew for certain; but there, one knew nothing, no one ever returned with news, and, really, it would be stupid to put oneself out if the priests were only talking nonsense. Yet she devoutly kissed her medal, which was all warm from its contact with her body, as a conjuration against death, the thought of which filled her with an icy terror.

Muffat had to go with her into the dressing-room; she trembled at being alone for a minute, even with the door open. When he had got into bed again, she wandered about the room looking into all the corners, and starting at the least sound. As she came to a mirror, she stopped before it as in the old days, lost in the contemplation of her nudity. But the sight only increased her fear. She ended by leisurely feeling the bones of her face with both her hands.

“How ugly one looks when one’s dead!” said she slowly.

And she drew in her cheeks, opened wide her eyes, and dropped her jaw to see how she would look. Then, with her features thus distorted, she turned to the count and said,

“Just look, my head will be so small,”

Then he grew angry. “You are mad; come to bed.”

He could picture her in a grave, with the emaciation of a century; and, joining his hands, he muttered a prayer. For some time past religion had regained possession of him, his attacks of faith, every day, had the violence of apoplectic fits, and left him without the least strength. His fingers snapped, and he continually repeated these words: “My God—my God—my God.” It was the cry of his impotence, the cry of his sin, against which he was powerless to resist, in spite of the certainty of his damnation. When Nana returned to the bed she found him lying under the clothes with a haggard look on his face, his nails digging into his chest, and his eyes gazing upwards as though seeking for heaven. And she burst out crying again; they embraced each other,