Jacques de Randal, having dined at home alone, told his valet he might go out, and he sat
down at his table to write some letters.
He ended every year in this manner, writing and dreaming. He reviewed the events of his
life since last New Year's Day, things that were now all over and dead; and, in proportion
as the faces of his friends rose up before his eyes, he wrote them a few lines, a cordial
New Year's greeting on the first of January.
So he sat down, opened a drawer, took out of it a woman's photograph, gazed at it a few
moments, and kissed it. Then, having laid it beside a sheet of notepaper, he began:
MY DEAR IRENE: You must by this time have received the little souvenir I sent, you
addressed to the maid. I have shut myself up this evening in order to tell you----"
The pen here ceased to move. Jacques rose up and began walking up and down the room.
For the last ten months he had had a sweetheart, not like the others, a woman with whom
one engages in a passing intrigue, of the theatrical world or the demi-monde, but a
woman whom he loved and won. He was no longer a young man, although he was still
comparatively young for a man, and he looked on life seriously in a positive and practical
spirit.
Accordingly, he drew up the balance sheet of his passion, as he drew up every year the
balance sheet of friendships that were ended or freshly contracted, of circumstances and
persons that had entered into his life.
His first ardor of love having grown calmer, he asked himself with the precision of a
merchant making a calculation what was the state of his heart with regard to her, and he
tried to form an idea of what it would be in the future.
He found there a great and deep affection; made up of tenderness, gratitude and the
thousand subtleties which give birth to long and powerful attachments.
A ring at the bell made him start. He hesitated. Should he open the door? But he said to
himself that one must always open the door on New Year's night, to admit the unknown
who is passing by and knocks, no matter who it may be.
So he took a wax candle, passed through the antechamber, drew back the bolts, turned the
key, pulled the door back, and saw his sweetheart standing pale as a corpse, leaning
against the wall.
