"Who?"
"She is always there—when you read to me in the evening, when you tell me that you love me, when you take me out walking. Just now you wanted to show me those ruins, to exchange our impressions. She does not wish it. She has come."
"But who?" he repeated, although he already knew.
"Anne de Sézery."
At the sound of her name which neither one nor the other had ever dared to utter, the distant girl with the golden eyes appeared actually to rise under the trees, there, near the cloister arch. Albert resolutely put away the phantom.
"Listen, Elizabeth," he said. "Nothing is between us, not even she. She has gone forever. Let us leave her. You are the wife of my youth. You have cared for our home alone so long. Do not destroy it, in your turn, for a shadow. I used to love your unawakened mind. When I believed it was so, I looked elsewhere for that happiness which we do not appreciate when it is within our grasp, and which requires such constant devotion, an almost daily watchfulness, to be realized and retained. Now I find it in you. I was not mistaken when I chose you. You are certainly the one who was to determine my life, my entire life. I love you and I beg you to forget."
She had listened to him, trembling, bending towards him, like those slender birches in the forest which rear themselves to reach the light. The last word aroused her again.
"But you, Albert, you. How could you forget her?"
"Near her, Elizabeth, I thought of you. Near you I do not think of her."
And with a curious persistence, she said: