Page:A chambermaid's diary.djvu/168

 smiling at me, and his eyes, which, in the shade of the bed, shone and burned like a lamp, following all my goings and comings.

They had placed a couch in the room for me, a nurse's couch and—oh! irony, in order doubtless to spare his modesty and mine—a screen behind which I could, undress. But often I did not lie upon the couch; Monsieur Georges wanted me always by his side. He was really comfortable, really happy, only when I was near him.

After having slept two hours, almost peacefully, he awoke toward midnight. He was a little feverish; the spots at the points of his cheek-bones were a little redder. Seeing me sitting at the head of his bed, my cheeks damp with tears, he said to me, in a tone of gentle reproach:

"What, weeping again? You wish, then, to make me sad, and to give me pain? Why do you not lie down? Come and lie down beside me."

I cried, shaken by sobs:

"Ah! Monsieur Georges, do you wish me, then, to kill you? Do you wish me to suffer all my life from remorse at having killed you? "

All my life! I had already forgotten that I wanted to die with him, to die of him, to die as he died.

"Monsieur Georges! Monsieur Georges! Have pity on me, I implore you!"

But his lips were on my lips. Death was on my lips.