ABSENCE


At eighteen Pierre left the home in the country where he had been
born.

At the very moment when he left, his old mother was ill in bed in
the blue room, where there were the daguerreotype of his father and
peacock-feathers in a vase and a clock representing Paul and Virginia.
Its hands pointed to the hour of three.

In the courtyard under the fig-tree his grandfather was resting.

In the garden his fiancée stood among roses and gleaming pear-trees.

* * * * *

Pierre went to earn his living in a country where there were negroes
and parrots and india-rubber trees and molasses and fevers and snakes.

He dwelled there thirty years.

* * * * *

At the very moment when he returned to the home in the country where
he had been born, the blue room had faded to white, his mother was
reposing in the bosom of heaven, the picture of his father was no
longer there, the peacock-feathers and the vase had disappeared. Some
sort of object stood in the clock's place.