"If only I could take that smile with me!" she said, drying her eyes.

Then she went into the house and took to the bed, which she would only
leave for her coffin.

A week went by, one day exactly like another. Old Annette and Louis
took it in turns to sit up with Mme. Willemsens, never taking their
eyes from the invalid. It was the deeply tragical hour that comes in
all our lives, the hour of listening in terror to every deep breath
lest it should be the last, a dark hour protracted over many days. On
the fifth day of that fatal week the doctor interdicted flowers in the
room. The illusions of life were going one by one.

Then Marie and his brother felt their mother's lips hot as fire
beneath their kisses; and at last, on the Saturday evening, Mme.
Willemsens was too ill to bear the slightest sound, and her room was
left in disorder. This neglect for a woman of refined taste, who clung
so persistently to the graces of life, meant the beginning of the
death-agony. After this, Louis refused to leave his mother. On Sunday
night, in the midst of the deepest silence, when Louis thought that
she had grown drowsy, he saw a white, moist hand move the curtain in
the lamplight.

"My son!" she said. There was something so solemn in the dying woman's
tones, that the power of her wrought-up soul produced a violent
reaction on the boy; he felt an intense heat pass through the marrow
of his bones.

"What is it, mother?"