THE STRANGER.
What courage are you talking of? We have done all man could do…. She was dead more than an hour ago….
THE OLD MAN.
She was alive this morning!… I met her coming out of church…. She told me she was going away; she was going to see her grandmother on the other side of the river where you found her…. She did not know when I should see her again…. She must have been on the point of asking me something; then she dared not and left me abruptly. But I think of it now…. And I saw nothing!… She smiled as they smile who choose to be silent, or who are afraid they will not be understood…. She seemed hardly to hope…. Her eyes were not clear and hardly looked at me….
THE STRANGER.
Some peasants told me they had seen her wandering on the river-bank until nightfall…. They thought she was looking for flowers…. It may be that her death….
THE OLD MAN.
We cannot tell…. What is there we can tell?… She was perhaps of those who do not wish to speak, and every one of us bears in himself more than one reason for no longer living…. We cannot see in the soul as we see in that room. They are all like that…. They only say trite things; and no one suspects aught…. You live for months by some one who is no longer of this world and whose soul can bend no longer; you answer without thinking; and you see what happens…. They look like motionless dolls, and, oh, the events that take place in their souls!… They do not know themselves what they are…. She would have lived as the rest live…. She would have said up to her death: "Monsieur, Madame, we shall have rain this morning," or else, "We are going to breakfast; we shall be thirteen at table," or else: "The fruits are not yet ripe." They speak with a smile of the flowers that have fallen, and weep in the dark…. An angel even would not see what should be seen; and man only understands when it is too late…. Yesterday evening she was there, under the lamp like her sisters, and you would not see them as they should be seen, if this had not occurred…. I seem to see her now for the first time…. Something must be added to common life before we can understand it…. They are beside you day and night, and you perceive them only at the moment when they depart forever…. And yet the strange little soul she must have had; the poor, naïve, exhaustless little soul she had, my son, if she said what she must have said, if she did what she mast have done!…
THE STRANGER.
Just now they are smiling in silence in the room….