“You are looking better already,” I said: “that is a good sign.”
“Yes,” she murmured, as she fell back, “they must not know at once.”
She was thinking of her parents.
Her father gave up all hope as soon as he saw her. I could not misunderstand his ravaged face. For a long time he had known that some secret grief had undermined her health, but he did not believe the time had come so soon. The tenacious optimism of Mme. Mairieux relieved the situation of its tragedy.
“We are going to diet her,” she said; “in a few months I assure you she will be transformed.”
And even when she learned that a specialist was to come expressly from Paris, almost once every week, to take care of our invalid, she could not believe Raymonde beyond recovery. She considered me attentive and generous. The thought of this great doctor that we were putting to so much trouble was agreeable to her, and quieted her anxiety. In the old days her perseverance would have been a precious encouragement to me, but now I saw too clearly the error of it to summon hope.
Raymonde, who had been brought into the chateau on a stretcher, would not leave it alive. Reflected in my frightened love, which was no longer deluded, and which nothing could again alter, she watched herself die and pass away as in a mirror.
* * *
During the pleasant hours of the day, her chair was placed near an open window. I never left her. I attached myself to each moment as if to prevent its flight.
The birds were singing, the leaves beginning to come out. One seemed to hear the germination in the earth like a low hum in the clear air. I was tortured by the sight of this silently renewing life while the work of death was going on before me.