ILLNESSES like the one to which Armand had succumbed have at least this much to be said for them: they either kill you at once or let themselves be conquered very quickly.
A fortnight after the events which I have just recounted, Armand was convalescing very satisfactorily, and we were bound by a firm friendship. I had scarcely left his sick room throughout the whole time of his illness.
Spring had dispensed its flowers, leaves, birds, and harmonies in abundance, and my friend's window cheerfully overlooked his garden which wafted its healthy draughts up to him.
The doctor had allowed him to get up, and we often sat talking by the open window at that hour of the day when the sun is at its warmest, between noon and two o'clock.
I studiously avoided speaking to him of Marguerite, for I was still afraid that the name would reawaken some sad memory which slumbered beneath the sick man's apparent calm. But Armand, on the contrary, seemed to take pleasure in speaking of her? not as he had done previously, with tears in his eyes, but with a gentle smile which allayed my fears for his state of mind.
I had noticed that, since his last visit to the cemetery and the spectacle which had been responsible for causing his serious breakdown, the measure of his mental anguish seemed to have been taken by his physical illness, and Marguerite's death had ceased to present itself through the eyes of the past. A kind of solace had come with the certainty he had acquired and, to drive off the somber image which often thrust itself into his mind, he plunged into the happier memories of his affair with Marguerite and appeared willing to recall no others.