Renée's complaint did not make her cross and capricious, nor did it
cause her any of that nervous irritability so common to invalids, and
which makes those who are nursing them share their suffering morally.
She gave herself entirely up to her fate. Her life was ebbing away
without any apparent effort on her part to hold it back or to stop it in
its course. She was still affectionate and gentle. Her wishes had none
of the unreasonableness of dying fancies. The darkness which was
gathering round her brought peace with it. She did not fight against
death, but let it come like a beautiful night closing over her white
soul.
There were times, however, when Nature asserted itself within her, when
her mind faltered from sheer bodily weakness, and when she listened to
the stealthy progress of the disease which was gradually detaching her
from her hold on life. At such times she would maintain a profound
silence and would be terribly calm, remaining for a long time mute and
motionless almost like a dead person. She would pass half the day in
this way without even hearing the clock strike, gazing before her just
beyond her feet with a steady, fixed gaze and seeing nothing at all. Her
father could not even catch the expression of her eyes at such times.
Her long lashes would quiver two or three times, and she would hide her
eyes by letting the lids droop over them, and it seemed to him then as
though she were asleep with her eyes half open. He would talk to her,
search his brains for something that might interest her, and endeavour
to make jokes, so that she should hear him and feel that he was there;
but in the middle of his sentence his daughter's attention, her
thoughts, and her intelligent look would leave him. He no longer felt
the same warmth in her affection, and when he was with her he himself
felt chilled now. It seemed as if disease were robbing him day by day of
a little more of his daughter's heart.