Nothing of what passed within my heart escaped my wife.
“You are mistaken, dear,” she said. “This is not the end.” She was thinking: “This is the beginning. It is not the earth that is calling me.”
At that moment, a bell began to toll the Angelus. Other churches took up the burden from a distance.
“Listen,” she murmured, inspired by those churchly voices, as she had been in the garden of the Pincio,—“listen—”
I wanted to close the window, on account of the evening air. She allowed me to do so, but she was thinking “Of what avail?” Or perhaps she was repeating to herself:
“It is so simple.”
* * *
One morning I found M. Mairieux at the door, having come over for news of the patient.
“Won’t you come in?” I asked.
He looked at me with his sad eyes, so charged with fatherly affection. He did not know, then, that I was no longer the same man.