.

Death and Departure.
Now I must tell of my own terrible sorrow, which turned my life to bitterness and my hopes to ashes.
Never were a man and a woman happier together than I and Natalie.
Mentally, physically, spiritually we were perfectly mated, and we loved each other dearly.

Truly we were as one.

Yet there was something about her which filled me with vague fears, especially after she found that she was to become a mother.

I would talk to her of the child, but she would sigh and shake her head, her eyes filling with tears, and say that we must not count on the continuance of such happiness as ours, for it was too great.
I tried to laugh away her doubts, though whenever I did so I seemed to hear Bastin's slow voice remarking casually that she might die, as he might have commented on the quality of the claret.