I gave her the story of the accident in a few words, without
laying too much stress on some too harrowing details. I told her
about our first day's journey, and how it had been filled with
recollections of her and of love. And she listened eagerly,
without shedding a tear, leaning her face towards me, as some
zealous doctor might lean to watch any change in a patient's
face. When she seemed to me to have opened her whole heart to
pain, to be deliberately plunging herself into misery with the
first delirious frenzy of despair, I caught at my opportunity,
and told her of the fears that troubled the poor dying man, told
her how and why it was that he had given me this fatal message.
Then her tears were dried by the fires that burned in the dark
depths within her. She grew even paler. When I drew the letters
from beneath my pillow and held them out to her, she took them
mechanically; then, trembling from head to foot, she said in a
hollow voice:

"And _I_ burned all his letters!--I have nothing of him left!
--Nothing! nothing!"

She struck her hand against her forehead.

"Madame----" I began.

She glanced at me in the convulsion of grief.

"I cut this from his head, this lock of his hair."

And I gave her that last imperishable token that had been a very