Page:Gaston Leroux--The man with the black feather.djvu/336

312 the window is a few inches open, for the night is muggy. You advance slowly, noiselessly to a screening shrub, set down the sandalwood box, and peer through the leafless branches into the cosy drawing-room.

Ah! what have you seen in the drawing-room?… Why that deep groan? Why do you tear the white locks from your brow?… What have you seen?… After all, does it matter what you have seen, since you are dead? Did you not wish to see your wife happy? Well, you see her happy!

She and M. Lecamus are sitting on the sofa. They are holding one another's hand; they are gazing at one another with the eyes of lovers. He kisses her, with respect but with devotion. He is consoling her for the loss of you. You wished it. How can he better console her than by replacing you?

Theophrastus, the gentle, kind-hearted manufacturer of rubber stamps, perceives this. He drops on his knees on the cold, wet grass, weeping tears of bitter resignation. He is reconciling himself to the necessity of the cruel fact that they are sitting in his comfortable drawing-room, and he is kneeling on his cold, wet grass. He is almost reconciled to it; but not quite. What is that that is thrusting,