This was the cruel grave which he gave Anne de Sézery.
But she fixed him with her questioning eyes, with her immense eyes, and this look disturbed him. He felt it pierce him like a sharp point. She had reflected too much, suffered too much, lived too much in these last years not to know his deepest thoughts. Conquered, subdued by this effort of which she bore the touching trace, the application with which by stone she had reconstructed their devastated hearth, he was afraid of lying to her, and gently taking her face between his hands to draw her to him, he said quite close to her:
"Elizabeth, do not look at me like that. Yes, this letter of Anne's has hurt me. But it is past now, I swear it. With her, whatever her love might be, we should walk towards death. With you, it is toward life."
"My Albert!"
"What a distance we have covered only to return to our starting point!"
"I am so weary!"
He rested the dear face against his shoulder.
"I am so happy here," she said with abandon.
Her sorrow, her deep sorrow had not been in vain. It had reestablished the unity of the family in her charge. How sadly she had learned that we are much more responsible for the little things than for the great ones in which circumstances play a large part, and that it is our duty, day by day, to strengthen the chain of our happiness, so easy to break. The future owed her compensations. She had been unable to retain the illusions of her youth. But she understood better, and he as well as she, the resisting force of human love when it is sustained by a sacred promise and the visible bond of children. With an energy which had been dormant she had accomplished the most difficult of all tasks: reconstruction. And in transforming her, that effort had made her more worthy of being loved, more developed in intelligence and charm. She had triumphed over her rival by her unswerving courage, as well as by her youth; and, freed at last, he recognized it.
"I have learned to love you," she said.