So his presentiments had not deceived him! Olivier had really followed him. Olivier had been taken by surprise in the garden. Was he dead? Was he wounded? Where was he lying helpless?
All night long Hautefeuille wandered about the roads, searching in the ditches, among the hedges, the stones, feeling about on the ground at the foot of the trees. In the morning he was returning, literally mad after his useless researches, when, going toward the hotel by another road, he met two gardeners pushing a handcart. In it was laid a human form. He walked up to it and recognized his friend.
Olivier had received two balls in the chest. Upon his face, soiled with the sand of the road, was an expression of infinite sadness. Judging from the place where the gardeners had found him, he must have walked for a quarter of an hour after being wounded. Then his strength had failed him; he had fainted and had died—probably without ever coming to himself again—of a hemorrhage caused by his wounds and the effort he had made.
Where are the dead, our dead? Where go those who have loved us, whom we have loved, those to whom we have been gentle, kind, helpful, those towards whom we have been guilty of inexplicable wrongs, those who have left us before we have ever known if we have been pardoned?
But whether this life of the invisible dead which surround our terrestrial existence be a dream or a reality, it is certain that Ely has never dared to see Pierre or to write to him since that terrible night. Whenever she takes up the pen to draw near him again, once more something prevents her. And something always stays Pierre's hand when he tries to give her a sign of his existence.
The dead stands between the living, the dead who will never, never disappear.