The doctor and the nurse had gone out. Madame de Piennes remained alone with the sick girl, a little alarmed at finding a love affair in a history which she had arranged quite otherwise in her imagination.
"So somebody deceived you, unhappy child!" she resumed after a brief silence.
"Me! no. How deceive a miserable girl like me? Simply he no longer cared for me. He was right; I am not what he needs. He has always been good and generous. I had written to him to tell him where I was, and if he wished me to come to him. Then he wrote me—things which gave me much pain. The other day, when I returned home, I let fall a mirror which he had given me, a Venetian mirror he said. The mirror was broken. I said to myself: 'This is the last stroke!' It is a sign that all is at an end between us—I had nothing left of his. I had placed all the jewels in pawn— And then I said to myself, that if I were to take my life, that would be a grief to him, and I should be revenged. The window was open, and I threw myself out."
"But, miserable girl, the motive was as frivolous as the act was criminal."
"Well and good! But how can it be helped? When one is sorrowful, one does not reflect. It
