She smiles again, and murmurs:

"Oh! how happy I am!"

She knows, however, that she is going to die, that she will never see the
springtime, that in a year, along the same promenade, these same people
who pass before her now will come again to breathe the warm air of this
charming spot, with their children a little bigger, with their hearts all
filled with hopes, with tenderness, with happiness, while at the bottom
of an oak coffin, the poor flesh which is still left to her to-day will
have decomposed, leaving only her bones lying in the silk robe which she
has selected for a shroud.

She will be no more. Everything in life will go on as before for others.
For her, life will be over, over forever. She will be no more. She
smiles, and inhales as well as she can, with her diseased lungs, the
perfumed air of the gardens.

And she sinks into a reverie.

She recalls the past. She had been married, four years ago, to a Norman
gentleman. He was a strong young man, bearded, healthy-looking, with wide
shoulders, narrow mind, and joyous disposition.

They had been united through financial motives which she knew nothing
about. She would willingly have said No. She said Yes, with a movement of
the head, in order not to thwart her father and mother. She was a
Parisian, gay, and full of the joy of living.