These two beings, formerly accustomed to think as one, no longer, unless at rare intervals, enjoyed those moments of communion, of passionate unreserve which feed the life of the heart; and finally there came a time when even these rare pleasures ceased.

Physical suffering was now a boon to the poor woman, helping her to endure the void of separation, which might have killed her had she been truly living.

Her bodily pain became so great that there were times when she was joyful in the thought that he whom she loved was not a witness of it.

She lay watching Balthazar in the evening hours, and knowing him happy in his own way, she lived in the happiness she had procured for him,--a shadowy joy, and yet it satisfied her.

She no longer asked herself if she were loved, she forced herself to believe it; and she glided over that icy surface, not daring to rest her weight upon it lest it should break and drown her soul in a gulf of awful nothingness.
No events stirred the calm of this existence; the malady that was slowly consuming Madame Claes added to the household stillness, and in this condition of passive gloom the House of Claes reached the first weeks of the year 1816.