She herself put the revolver to her head. I wanted to do it, but she stopped me:
"No, that is not right; let me do it. Like this, my child.... And afterwards make the sign of the cross over me and lay the flowers on my heart...."
When I fired, she made a slight movement with her lips, and I fired again....
She lay quiet; in her dead face there was a kind of bitter happiness. Her hair was loose; the tortoise-shell comb lay on the floor. I staggered to my feet in order to put an end to myself. But the room, despite the blinds, was light; in the light and stillness which suddenly surrounded me, I saw clearly her face already pale.... And suddenly madness seized me; I rushed to the window, undid and threw open the shutters, began shouting and firing into the air.... The rest you know...."
[In the spring, five years ago, while wandering in Algeria, the writer of these lines visited Constantine.... There often comes to him a memory of the cold, rainy, and yet spring evenings which he spent by the fire in the reading-room of a certain old and homely French hotel. In the heavy, elaborate book-case were much-read illustrated papers, and in them you could see the faded photographs of Madame Maraud. There were photographs taken of her at different ages, and among them the Lausanne portrait of her as a girl.... Her story is told here once more, from a desire to tell it in one's own way.]
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