"And I also!" assented Pierre. The two friends did not exchange another word during the quarter of an hour the carriage took to arrive at the Hôtel des Palmes. What could they have said in such a moment to increase or diminish the mortal agony that choked their utterance? Olivier went straight to his wife's room the moment the carriage arrived, without asking Pierre when they would meet again and without Pierre asking him. It was one of those silences that happen at a death-bed, when all seems paralyzed by the first icy impression of the unchangeable, when all is stifled in the grip of the "nevermore"! The crisis of weakness, the necessity of expansion that follows such struggles, began for Du Prat on the threshold of Berthe's room. He was saluted by the sickly odor of ether upon his entrance. Outlined, pale and haggard, against the pillow, regarding him with eyes swimming in tears, he saw the wasted face of the girl who had trusted him, who had given him her life, the flower of her youth, all her hopes and aspirations. How unyielding he must have been toward the suffering, self-contained creature for her to have concealed all her feelings from him, loving him as she did! He could not utter a word. He sat down near the bed and remained for a long time looking at the poor invalid. The sensation of the suffering that enveloped all four--Berthe, Pierre, Ely, and himself--pierced him to the heart. Berthe loved him and knew that her lave was not returned. Pierre loved Ely, and was beloved by her, but his happiness had just been poisoned forever by the most horrible of revelations. As for himself, he was in the grasp of a passion for his former mistress, one whom he had suspected, insulted, deserted, and who had now given herself to his dearest friend. Like a man who falls overboard in mid-ocean, who is swimming desperately in the raging sea, and who sees the waves assembling that will swallow him up, Olivier felt the irresistible power of the love he had so yearned to know, rising all around, within him and on every hand. He was in the influence of the storm, and he felt it sweeping him away. He was afraid. While he sat near the bedside, listening to the irregular breathing of his young wife, he felt for an instant the intellectual and emotional vertigo that imparts to even the least philosophical natures at such moments the vision of the fatal forces of nature, the implacable workers-out of our destinies. And then, like a swimmer tossed about by the palpitating ocean, making a feeble effort to struggle against the formidable waves before they engulf him, he tried to recover himself--to act. He wanted to speak with Berthe, to soften all that it was possible to soften of her suffering.