People would say: "How pretty she was! that little Yvette," and nothing more. And as she looked at her arm leaning on the arm of her chair, she thought again, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And again a great shudder of horror ran over her whole body, and she did not know how she could disappear without the whole earth being blotted out, so much it seemed to her that she was a part of everything, of the fields, of the air, of the sunshine, of life itself.
There were bursts of laughter in the garden, a great noise of voices and of calls, the bustling gaiety of country house parties, and she recognized the sonorous tones of M. de Belvigne, singing:
"I am underneath thy window, Oh, deign to show thy face." She rose, without reflecting, and looked out. They all applauded. They were all five there, with two gentlemen whom she did not know.
She brusquely withdrew, annoyed by the thought that these men had come to amuse themselves at her mother's house, as at a public place.
The bell sounded for breakfast. "I will show them how to die," she said.
She went downstairs with a firm step, with something of the resolution of the Christian martyrs going into the circus, where the lions awaited them.
She pressed their hands, smiling in an affable but rather haughty manner. Servigny asked her:
"Are you less cross to-day, Mam'zelle?"
She answered in a severe and peculiar tone: "Today, I am going to commit follies. I am in my Paris mood, look out!"
Then turning toward Monsieur de Belvigne, she said: