* * * * *
"We must never part again."
"We need never," said she. "I am yours. I am not existent in the world. The Baron Carl von Lichtenberg is dead: he died when I put on these things. There is no one to trouble us!"
"Look!" I said. "This is Etiolles."
* * * * *
I had as completely forgotten Franzius and Eloise as though they had never existed. Madame Ancelot seemed strange; and the Pavilion a place which I recognised, but which had no part in my new life.
Sitting opposite to my companion at table—for we had a déjeûner under the big chestnut-tree—I could contemplate her at my leisure. Surely God had never created a more lovely and perfect woman. Eyelashes long and black, up curved, and tipped with brown; violet-grey eyes. Ah, yes; I do not care to think of them now. I only care to remember that voice and smile, that ineffable expression, all that told of the existence of the beautiful spirit that Time might never touch nor Death destroy.
From the forest came the wood-doves' song to the immortal and ever-weeping Susie. We could hear the birds in the château gardens, and a bell from some village church ringing the Angelus—faint, far away, robbed of its harshness by the vast and sunlit silence. She seemed the soul of all that music, all that silence, all that sweetness; and she was mine, entirely and for ever. We were beyond convention and law, as were Adam and Eve.
"And you know," said she, as if reading my thoughts, "I am nobody—I have not even a name. Yesterday I was Baron Carl von Lichtenberg, with great estates. Now, who am I? And my great estates——" She opened a purse, in which lay a few louis. "Here they are."