VIII

The void beyond the dark hill tops was red, a glowing red that the eye would not fear, and Duroy, despite himself, felt the majesty of the close of the day. He murmured, finding no other term strong enough to express his admiration, “It is stunning.”

Forestier raised his head, and turning to his wife, said: “Let me have some fresh air.”

“Pray, be careful,” was her reply. “It is late, and the sun is setting; you will catch a fresh cold, and you know how bad that is for you.”

He made a feverish and feeble movement with his right hand that was almost meant for a blow, and murmured with a look of anger, the grin of a dying man that showed all the thinness of his lips, the hollowness of the cheeks, and the prominence of all the bones of the face: “I tell you I am stifling. What does it matter to you whether I die a day sooner or a day later, since I am done for?”

She opened the window quite wide. The air that entered surprised all three like a caress. It was a soft, warm breeze, a breeze of spring, already laden with the scents of the odoriferous shrubs and flowers which sprang up along this shore. A powerful scent of turpentine and the harsh savor of the eucalyptus could be distinguished.

Forestier drank it in with short and fevered gasps. He clutched the arm of his chair with his nails, and said in low, hissing, and savage tones: “Shut the window. It hurts me; I would rather die in a cellar.”

His wife slowly closed the window, and then looked out in space, her forehead against the pane. Duroy, feeling very ill at ease, would have liked to have chatted with the invalid and reassured him. But he could think of nothing to comfort him. At length he said: “Then you have not got any better since you have been here?”