"You needn't be jealous, Anna. (People are jealous sometimes even when they are not in love.) It was a few years after you were born. You were a little child then, and nobody turned to look at you on the streets except the mothers.
"We were engaged in the ancestral park of her parents. She had bright curls tied with ribbons. I pranced on horseback for her. She smiled for me.
"I was young and strong then, full of hope and full of the beginning of things. I thought I was going to conquer the world, and even had the choice of the means to conquer it. Alas, all I did was to cross hastily over its surface. She was younger than I, a bud so recently, blown, that one day, I remember, I saw her doll lying on the bench that we were sitting on. We used to say to each other, 'We shall come back to this park when we are old, shall we not?' We loved each other—you understand—I have no time to tell you, but you understand, Anna, that these few relics of memory that I give you at random are beautiful, incredibly beautiful.
"She died the very day in spring when the date of our wedding was set. We were both taken sick with a disease that was epidemic that year in our country, and she did not have the strength to escape the monster. That was twenty-five years ago. Twenty-five years, Anna, between her death and mine.
"And now here is the most precious secret, her name."
He whispered it. I did not catch it.
"Say it over again, Anna."
She repeated it, vague syllables which I caught without being able to unite them into a word.
"I confide the name to you because you are here. If you were not here, I should tell it to anyone, no matter whom, provided that would save it."
He added in an even, measured voice, to make it hold out until the end: