In the summer months, Madeleine lived in a cottage of her own on Cépet Point, where the peninsula juts out into the roadstead and is always exposed to a cool breeze. Inspections often took me to the batteries in that neighborhood, and I had occasion for many a delightful promenade in the groves and forests of Cépet and Sicie. I would ride up on horseback with an orderly, who came on the horse that Madeleine was to ride. We kept a side-saddle for her in the sentry box at one of the customs’ houses.... If you want details, there you have plenty of them. However....
I have figured it out: It was in the month of May, of the year 1907, that I met Madeleine for the first time at the old castle at La Garde; it was in the month of June of the same year that I encountered her for the second time at the fiesta; it was two or three weeks after that when I first took her in my arms and lifted her from her feet.
And, she was a heavy person, robust, solid, well-built, but heavy, heavy!
Some two months later, when we were playing on a beach, it occurred to me to take her in my arms and lift her again. I turned all my muscle to the task and prepared for the strain I so well remembered. To my surprise she was light, as light as a feather, strangely, surprisingly light! I carried her about in my arms without effort. And she had been such a heavy person!
IX
The dying flame of my memory burns up here into a brighter light. I remember the following with a strange, besetting vividness.
As Madeleine rose from the sand some straws and bits of earth clung to her skirt, and I brushed them off. Under the trees that bordered the shore, our horses were browsing at some leaves, and I still can hear the crumpling sound as they chewed them. To get back into the saddle, Madeleine rested a foot in my hand; and again I had that sensation of her extraordinary lightness. I looked up at her in some alarm.
As we rode along, I finally asked concernedly: