"Do you think that people have not talked about us? Whether they know or
do not know, they talk. Not everything is known, but everything is
said."

She relapsed into her dream. He thought her discontented, cross, for
some reason which she would not tell. He bent upon her beautiful, grave
eyes which reflected the light of the grate. But she reassured him.

"I do not know whether any one talks about me. And what do I care?
Nothing matters."

He left her. He was going to dine at the club, where a friend was
waiting for him. She followed him with her eyes, with peaceful sympathy.
Then she began again to read in the ashes.

She saw in them the days of her childhood; the castle wherein she had
passed the sweet, sad summers; the dark and humid park; the pond where
slept the green water; the marble nymphs under the chestnut-trees, and
the bench on which she had wept and desired death. To-day she still
ignored the cause of her youthful despair, when the ardent awakening of
her imagination threw her into a troubled maze of desires and of fears.
When she was a child, life frightened her. And now she knew that life is
not worth so much anxiety nor so much hope; that it is a very ordinary
thing. She should have known this. She thought:

"I saw mamma; she was good, very simple, and not very happy. I dreamed
of a destiny different from hers. Why? I felt around me the insipid
taste of life, and seemed to inhale the future like a salt and pungent
aroma. Why? What did I want, and what did I expect? Was I not warned
enough of the sadness of everything?"