The girl raised herself wearily from her knees by the side of her bed, where she had fallen when she had bravely gotten rid of Jean and Andrée.
"C'est fini!"
She repeated the words as she looked around the room, the poor, cheap little chamber where she had been so happy. Just so has many a bereaved returned from the freshly made grave of some beloved to see the terrible emptiness of life in every corner of the silent home.
Mlle. Fouchette had grievously overrated her capacity to bear—to suffer. Instead of lightening the load she had assumed, the discovery of her sister in the beloved had doubled it.
She had schooled herself to believe that to be near the object of her love would be enough. She had thought that all else, being impossible, might be subordinated to the great pleasure of presence. That to serve him daily, to share after a fashion his smiles and sorrows, to be at his elbow with her sympathy and counsel, would be her happiness,—all that she could ask for in this world. It would be almost as good as marriage, n'est-ce pas?
Fouchette was in error. Not wholly as to the last assumption; it was a false theory, marriage or no marriage. Countless thousands of better and more intellectual people have in other ways found, are finding, will continue to find, it to be so.
Mlle. Fouchette's tactical training in the great normal school of life had not embraced Love. Therefore no line of retreat had been considered. She was not only defeated, she was overwhelmed.
All of her theories had vanished in a breath.
Instead of finding happiness in the happiness of those whom she loved, it was torture,—the thumbscrew and the rack. It was terrible!
How could she have imagined that she might live contentedly under this day after day?