"Jean," she said very quietly, "it is about your coming back that I want to speak to you. I have thought it all out last night. It is not for a little while. When you go it is for always. You can never come back."
"Never come back! Ah, is it that then that is troubling you?" he said eagerly. "You mean that you would not mind my going for a little while, only you think it is for more than that?"
"You do not understand, Jean"—it seemed as though she must cry out in wild abandon, as though the tears must come and fill her eyes, as though she were not brave at all. Would not the bon Dieu help her now! She drew her hands away from him, and turned from him for an instant. "You can never come back, Jean; you can never come back to the old life. You will go on and on, further and further away from it, making a great name for yourself, and your friends will be all like the grand monde who have been here, and I know that I cannot go into that life, too—I understand that all so well. And—and so, Jean, I have come to tell you that you are free."
"Free!" he cried—and gazed at her in stupefaction. The colour came and went from his face. He had not thought of this from her! And yet it was what he had said in his soul—if only there were nothing between Marie-Louise and himself! It was as if a weight had been lifted from him—only replacing the weight was a miserable pricking of conscience. "Free! What are you saying?"
And now the dark eyes were bright and deep and unfaltering—and suddenly she drew her form erect, and her head was thrown proudly back.
"Free, Jean, because you must not think any more of me; because you are to be a great man in your country and it is your duty to go, for France has called you, and France is first; because"—her voice, quivering, yet triumphant, was ringing through the room—"because I give you to France, Jean! You do not belong to me now—you belong to France!"
For a moment he did not speak. There seemed a thousand emotions, soul-born, surging upon him. Her words thrilled him; it was over; there was relief; it was done. She had gone where he had not dared to go in his thoughts—to the end. He would never come back, she said. He was free. But he could not have her think that he could let her go like that!
"No, no, Marie-Louise!" he burst out. "Do you think that even if I belonged to France, even if all my life were changed, that I could ever forget you, that I could forget Bernay-sur-Mer, and all the people and my life here?"
"Yes," she said, "you will forget."
"Never!" he asserted fiercely.