There was no sign that any event had occurred that evening. Odette had spent it alone in her little drawing-room. The chorus in the next apartment was stilled. But that evening was made up of the most important hours which the young wife had experienced since the death of her husband. Odette was aware that something had been revealed within herself, but she was ill adapted to analyze herself, and the phenomenon was still wrapped in mist. It had manifested its reality only by a single act of hers--an act which she remembered, which abode with her: the prayer for forgiveness addressed to the picture of her beloved Jean. She returned continually to this material fact; she had seized the photograph and had kissed it as if she had been at fault. Thanks to this fact, the spiritual operations of which it was the conclusion were not arrested, did not vanish like smoke, and pursued her that night, on the morrow, and during the following days. So sudden a burst of light might indeed have been ephemeral in character. We are all subject, especially under an exterior influence acting upon the senses, to similar spasms of enthusiasm, or to dreams of a like generosity which may be only a passing impulse. They die away and we return to a condition which we call reasonable, that is to say, lucid, calm, well-balanced, and tame. With Odette this illumination had not the character of a sudden impulse, but was rather the outcome of a long and almost unconscious preparation. How many words, how many tidings, how many hints registered in her memory, how many puzzling suggestions, how many dramatic scenes, how many ideas had been as so many arrows of direction, guiding her toward the place where she had received the divine spark! How many books read, how many musings, apparently without result, had determined the direction that had brought her here! Odette was like a clay which during two and a half years had been continually receiving the touches of a thumb or chisel, powerless to give her the form which an invisible artist desired her to take, and the last touch, removing an encumbering bit, had produced precisely the shape desired. Odette awoke next morning in the same condition in which she had fallen asleep, with the one difference that she no longer wept. But the tears of the evening had had their sweetness. She found herself in an almost grateful tranquillity. She went and came in the midst of Jean's photographs, and Jean did not reproach her for her new state of mind. His memory seemed to be in nowise outraged. And yet Odette did not forget that she had begged his forgiveness, as if it had been possible that she had failed him. This fact marked a well-determined date in the perturbations of her soul. But it seemed to her that she had received to her "Forgive me!" a gentle, calming reply, a loving approbation. XXXIII