him in exchange. Oh, how the past oppressed her now, how it hung round her shoulders, crushing her like a nightmare that was not to be shaken off, like the embrace of some leering monster! Oh, the remorse, the remorse that was beginning to torture her!
She stared before her as she stood leaning against the table; and beads of perspiration began to come out on her forehead in the small, warm room, full of summer haze. He continued to look at her, penetratingly. And suddenly he heard her voice speak his name:
"Henri . . ."
He did not answer, thought her strange, did not recognize her; and again he wondered what she thought, guessed or knew . . . and what else she wanted to say. But she, while a sweat of fear broke from her, made a great inward effort to release herself from the oppression of her past and her remorse, to be once more the woman that she had become: the woman young again; the woman whose life was beginning for the first time; the woman who thought, dreamed and loved; the woman in whom nowadays the thoughts and dreams sometimes darted and darted like multitudes of laughing butterfly fancies, swiftly, swiftly in front of them; the woman who loved so deeply that she floated in ecstasy as in the mystic sun of herself. Did she not now see farther than the usual little circle which
