From that day onward he began to yearn for Louise over the yawning chasm which his mother's death had left within him. He had never indeed forgotten the girl; her image had been dimmed somewhat by his grief, but it only wanted that little thing that had once belonged to her to bring her back to his mind. He took up the glove again, as soon as he was alone, kissed it, inhaled its scent, and fancied that he was still holding the girl in his embrace with his lips seeking hers. His nervous excitement, the mental feverishness which resulted from his long-continued inactivity, tended to intensify this species of intoxication. He felt vexed with himself on account of it, but he succumbed to it again and again, carried away by a passion which quite overpowered him. All this, too, increased his gloomy moodiness, and he even began to get snappish and surly with his cousin, as though she were in some way to blame for his passionate trances. Often, in the midst of some tranquil conversation, he would suddenly rush off and shut himself up in his room and wallow in his passionate recollections of the other girl. Then he would come downstairs again, weary and disgusted with life. At the end of a month he had so completely changed that Pauline grew quite hopeless and spent nights of torment. In the daytime she forced herself to assume a brave face, and kept herself perpetually busy in the house of which she was now the mistress. But at night, when she had closed the door of her room behind her, she dwelt upon her troubles, gave way completely, and wept like a child. She had no hope left; all her kindliness only met with an increasingly chilling reception. Could it really be, she wondered, that kindness and affection were insufficient, and that it was possible to love a person and yet cause him unhappiness? For she saw that her cousin was really unhappy, and she began to fear that it might somehow be her own fault. And then, beneath her doubts of herself, there lurked increasing fears of a rival influence. She had for a long time explained Lazare's gloomy moodiness to herself as springing from grief at his mother's death; but now she was again haunted by the idea of Louise, an idea which had occurred to her on the very day after Madame Chanteau's death, but which she had then scornfully dismissed amidst her pride in the power of her own affection, though every night now it forced itself upon her as she found the efforts of her love so unavailing.