Giselle nodded her head, not speaking.
Paule saw that it would not have been possible for her to speak. She saw, what she had been sure she would see, that the younger woman was suffering intensely. She realized, more than ever what the thing meant to her Bernard's wife; how for her everything of her memory of him, the memory she was to keep with her all her life, depended on what she was to learn in this hour. All the memory she was to keep of her dead husband depended on it. That she might remember him with tenderness and solace and peace; or that it must be always with uncertainty and restlessness, and bitter thoughts. To be able to mourn him fully, fearlessly; or to go on always tormenting herself with doubt. It was of desperate importance to her. Paule saw that. She knew that the younger woman kept silent because she could not speak, not because of any realization she had of the advantage silence gave her.
Giselle, silent, waited.
The older woman, braving the silence, took the thing up.
"You are going to believe what I tell you. I don't know why you should believe me, but you will. They all talk of it, but I am the only one who really knows. And I have got to tell you. The things they say are true, but with such a difference. I must make you understand the difference. Since the moment Dolly told me that you knew, I have known that I must make you understand. I cannot let you misunderstand him when he is dead."
She was holding her parasol across her knees, her hands in their soft tan gloves clutching the two ends of it very tight.
"It is rather terribly hard for me to tell you," she said, "harder even than for you to listen. Remember that, if I seem to go over it cruelly." She stopped, and Giselle nodded again.
"I must go over it," Paule went on, speaking very fast now, "so that we can have it all clear between us. Don't you see? He came home here for six days' leave. He told you he had six days' leave. When he went, at the end of those six days, you thought it was back to the front he was gone. Then, three days after he left you, he was killed in a bayonet charge. And his colonel, and some of his friends, said, writing to you and to other people of him, that it was especially sad to think he had been killed the very day he came back from his leave. So you knew that his leave had been of eight days, that he had had two days' extra leave of which he had not told you, spent, you did not know where, or with whom. And then it happened Dolly spoke to you of seeing him with me in Evreux the very day before he was killed. And so you knew. She had spoken of it to lots of people—the way people always say, you know, 'and I saw him only the day before.' And so every one knew. And you knew. But I have got to make you understand."
She let go her parasol and, leaning forward into the sunshine, threw her veil back from her face with her two hands. "I will let you see how I have suffered," she said, "it is written for you in my face." She was glad to have the younger woman see how much of her beauty was gone. "And that I loved him. You know—I must let you know—that I loved him. I loved him when you were a little schoolroom girl. And he did love me then." She drew herself up with a sudden flaming of pride. "I will give myself the comfort of saying that he loved me before he knew you, Giselle." The flame died down instantly, and she leaned forward, almost beseechingly. The parasol had fallen to the floor. "But he never loved me afterwards. From the moment he saw you—I was with him at somebody's dance the first time he saw you—I knew that for me everything was finished. Everything was swept away by his love of you. You know that, don't you?"