When he said that he loved a lovely child with a love as pure and fair as she, Laurent had boasted unduly. He had believed that he was telling the truth when he wrote to Thérèse, with the passionate warmth to which he was wont to give way when speaking to her of himself, and which contrasted so strangely with the cold and mocking tone he felt called upon to adopt in society. The declaration he was supposed to have made to the young woman who had filled his dreams, he had not made. A bird or a cloud, passing through the sky at night, had sufficed to overthrow the fragile edifice of happiness and passionate declamation which had sprung up in the morning in that childish, poetic imagination. The fear of making himself ridiculous had taken possession of him, or else the fear of being cured of his invincible and fatal passion for Thérèse. He remained there, making no reply to Catherine, who, being in haste to prepare everything for her dear mistress's arrival, decided to leave him alone. Laurent was agitated beyond expression. He asked himself why Thérèse was returning to Paris without telling him. Was she coming secretly with Palmer, or had she done as Laurent had done himself? Had she announced to him a happiness which had no existence, and the thought of which had already vanished? Did not this sudden and mysterious return conceal a rupture with Dick? Laurent was at once overjoyed and terrified by the thought. A thousand contrary ideas and emotions wrangled in his brain and in his nerves. There was a moment when he himself insensibly forgot the reality, and persuaded himself that those linen-covered objects were tombs in a cemetery. He had always had a horror of death, and his mind dwelt constantly upon it, in spite of himself. He saw it about him in all its forms. He fancied that he was surrounded by shrouds, and sprang to his feet in terror, crying: "Who is dead, then? Is it Thérèse? is it Palmer? I see, I feel that some one is dead in this neighborhood to which I have returned!--No, it is you," he replied, talking to himself, "it is you, who have lived in this house the only real days of your life, and who return hither lifeless, abandoned, forgotten, like a corpse!" Catherine returned, unnoticed by him, removed the coverings, dusted the furniture, threw all the windows and blinds wide open, and placed flowers in the great china vases which stood on gilt consoles. Then she approached him, and said: "Well, what are you doing here?" Laurent came out of his dream, and, looking about him in a dazed sort of way, saw the flowers reflected in the mirrors, the Boule cabinets glistening in the sun, and the whole holiday aspect which had succeeded, as if by magic, the funereal atmosphere of absence, which does, in truth, so closely resemble death. His hallucination took another course.