"Oh! Christophe! To think there are so many things in you, sitting there, close at hand, treasures that you will give to others, and I shall never be able to share!…"
"Are you mad? What's come to you?"
"I wonder what your life will be. I wonder what peril and sorrow you have still to go through…. I would like to follow you. I would like to be with you…. But I shan't see anything of it all. I shall be left stuck stupidly by the wayside."
"Stupid? You are that. Do you think that I would leave you behind even if you wanted to be left?"
"You will forget me," said Olivier.
Christophe got up and went and sat on the bed by Olivier's side: he took his wrists, which were wet with a clammy sweat of weakness. His nightshirt was open at the neck, showing his weak chest, his too transparent skin, which was stretched and thin like a sail blown out by a puff of wind to rending point. Christophe's strong fingers fumbled as he buttoned the neckband of Olivier's nightshirt. Olivier suffered him.
"Dear Christophe!" he said tenderly. "Yet I have had one great happiness in my life!"
"Oh! what on earth are you thinking of?" said Christophe. "You're as well as I am."
"Yes," said Olivier.
"Then why talk nonsense?"