"It is easy for you to talk."
"No, Odette, you don't consider that everything is changed."
"One's heart, too?"
"Yes, one's heart, too. Many among us pass for hard-hearted and inhuman, but everything now appears from another point of view."
"Love is always love."
Odette, whose sense of hearing was extremely acute, overheard a low-voiced conversation in which Simone was saying how well her dear Pierrot was looking, and she swooned again.
The rest of the day was only one lamentation, an inarticulate and continuous moaning.
The following days were no better. The physician dreaded meningitis.
Human beings are often weak in the face of great catastrophes when they are governed only by their natural sentiments. Yet Rose, who was in all things natural, remained completely devoted to Odette.
"It is easier," said Mme. de Blauve, "to nurse a gravely wounded man than a woman distracted with grief, for whom there is nothing to do, to whom there is nothing to say."