She fancied that she could remember, now, certain things that happened to her during her sleep of death in the _gargate_, but were not reproduced in her dream. She felt Renaud's arms lifting her out of the mire, and that, after all, is the one thing to be desired, more than life itself--the protection of the man she loved, her lover's mourning for her, thinking that she was dead.--But before that, a moment before, had she not felt the weight of a fixed gaze upon her?--She had looked dimly forth between her drooping eyelids, through her long lashes which seemed to her like a thick grating; and she fancied that she saw the gipsy, the ill-omened gitana, standing before her. "Yes, it is she, it is really she. She is standing here beside me. She looks very, very tall. Her head touches the sky. She is on the path leading to the cabin. She is just coming from the rendezvous. She has been kissing Renaud! When will he come? Will the witch's black shadow, standing so straight there, never go? What more do you want, witch? Don't you see that I am dead? I must make you think I am dead. Then you will leave me, at last!--The wicked woman is always smiling. Ah! there she goes.--How heavy her glance was! And how tall she was! She kept all the light from me. Now I can see the sky again. Is it you, Renaud, is it you, Jacques, who take me in your arms as if I were dead?--It is you, at last!" Thus cried poor Livette, delirious once more. But Renaud was sitting beside her bed with his face in his hands, listening to her. "It is you," she went on; "you think me dead, and I can feel you take me in your arms and quickly carry me away. But why do you not weep, when you see me so? It is you, at last! I am dead, and still I feel you. You have me in your arms. Your heart beats fast. Mine has ceased to beat. Where were you, bad boy? What did you say to her? But that is past and gone!--Is that woman very dear to your heart?--Why do you come no more to my father's house in the evening? He is very fond of you. Grandma is a dear old soul. Do you see how faithful she is to her dead husband? People knew how to love one another better in her day, she says. Is it true? Do you believe it, Jacques? And if I die, won't you keep my memory sacred, as she keeps grandpa's?--Why do you make me suffer so?--Are we two never to walk under the great elm again? Our pretty stone bench under the rose-bushes is very sad now, and lonely like a tombstone. Ah! if you had chosen! I was pretty, yes, pretty, pretty! And now I shall be ugly. For I have done with life, even if I am not dead. My life is at an end, at an end!" XXV THE PHANTOM Livette, who had been carried back to the Château d'Avignon many days before, had not left her bed. The fever clung to her obstinately. Nothing could be done.