“I was awake all last night,” he said. “Yesterday I saw a poor fellow who had fallen ill on the street, carried into the Hôtel Dieu, and the memory clung to me. I began to imagine how it would be if such a thing happened to me—what I should say when they asked for my friends,—how there would be none to send for. And at last, suddenly I thought of you. I said to myself, ‘I would send for her, and I think she would come.’”
“Yes, Monsieur,” she answered. “You might depend upon my coming.”
“I am used to being alone,” he went on; “but it seemed to me as I lay in the dark thinking it over, that to die alone would be a different matter. One would want some familiar face to look at—”
“Monsieur!” she burst forth. “You speak as if Death were always near you!”
“Do I?” he said. And he was silent for a few seconds, and looked down at her hand as he held it. Then he dropped it gently with a little sigh. “Good-bye,” he said, and so they parted.
In the afternoon she sat to Masson.
“How much longer,” he said to her in the course of the sitting,—“how much longer does he mean to live—this American? He has lasted astonishingly. They are wonderful fellows, these weaklings who burn themselves out. One might fancy that the flame which finally destroys them, also kept them alive.”
“Do you then think that he is so very ill?” she asked in a low voice.
“He will go out,” he answered, “like a candle. Shall I tell you a secret?”
She made a gesture of assent.