The cry came from me involuntarily, a cry of terror absolute:
“Madeleine!”
The woman seemed not to hear, just as she had seemed not to see. She walked rapidly past and away down the trail into the underbrush of the hollow.
VII
Madeleine, Madeleine de....
But no. I must not write her name!
I had met her the year before—that would be year before last, the year 1907. It was the month of May, I believe, but of that I cannot be sure. It seems so long, long ago, such a frightfully long, long, time ago! My memory is faltering like a waning candle flame flickering above its last drop of molten wax, sputtering with bursts of blue and yellow light as it is about to die out!
So then, the month of May, in the year 1907.... At this moment, a clearer flash of my memory comes—I see everything as vividly as I lived it then.