"He was asking for the children," explained her mother kindly—"Where are they?"
"In my room. Will you go and get them, Mamma?"
Philippe understood that no one else was to be present while he was reading the letter, and he was glad of this tête-à-tête with his former sweetheart.
Anne de Sézery, Elizabeth Molay-Norrois, figures of his youth, which still continued to affect him through the life of Albert Derize! What had become of the young girl of Saint Ismier, so baffling in her strange changes of mood? As she had come in the morning, so now again she came to his memory—the narrow golden eyes, the mouth with its drooping corners, which wore an expression of expectancy and of weariness. But on this face time must have left its trace. He looked at the writing and recognized it, although it was stiffer, firmer, with sudden flourishes and unfinished letters. And without stopping, he read the eight pages of foreign paper which crackled under his fingers like dead leaves under the foot which crushes them.
"PARIS, this Friday.
"Was it yesterday evening that you left me, my friend, my lover? It seems to me so long ago, and you see I am coming to you first. I am so much in dread now of all the minutes which pass so quickly, adding to my years, and will so soon carry away my youth with them. When I was a young girl—very vain of having attention paid me—and you came to Saint Ismier, I sometimes tried to be a little coquettish just to please you. It is not natural to me, and I understand the art so little, that I did not make a success of it. At that time you did not guess my affection, did you? It outdistanced yours by ten years. From afar and when you knew nothing of it, it was with you. Ah! if love could but give us the power to do away with time! But when one is loved, does not that serve to make one forget unpleasant days? Since I said good-by to my old Sézery home, which was sold, to my lands, to my trees, I have hardly known any but unpleasant days. Standing on the bridge of the boat which took me to England, I leaned over to look at the water, and the water seemed to carry away all my dreams. I felt as though I were casting my heart to the depths. What pride was required to live my humble life! And how hard I worked (I am afraid now that it may have worn me out and turned you from me)—to acquire a proficiency in the subjects which gave me the opportunity to meet you again. How I love to recall that meeting! It was just a year ago. You had come to London for that History Congress. Do you remember our visit to the Tower? I can still see the block where the Queens Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were beheaded. You were revivifying those poor dead creatures, and I too was coming out of my grave: I can confess it to you to-day. A man who is able to reanimate to so great a degree the past, stones and even hearts, must live very intensely.
"However, a month later, when I settled in Paris to receive the little legacy from my aunt which restored my independence, I made no effort to see you again. I was too much in fear of your indifference and my own recollections. Then Summer separated us, and I wished to free myself from the emotion which was constantly deepening and which threatened to absorb me. But you came back in the Autumn. It is a season so restless, so transitory, that each day seems to be filled with importance. It is then that one's soul is full of anguish, at the same time declining and expectant. One feels as if dying slowly, with the hope of being reborn. As for me, I have never been able to be happy in Autumn; now, especially, when I am beginning to understand the inevitable frailty, the precariousness of youth which is vanishing.
"How could I have refused when you offered to show me an unknown Paris, the historic Paris where phantoms still abide? When I was quite little, I loved the portraits of my ancestors at Sézery; and for the pleasure of knowing fear, I imagined that they were coming back at night. Oh, our wonderful walks along the quays, in the hot sunshine, or in those little streets which you know, where you called up for me ghosts of the past! And St. Germain and Malmaison, and Chantilly that we visited in late Autumn, when the forest has lost its foliage, and one sees so far into its depths and into one's heart as well. Each one of our walks meant another bond to draw us together. No doubt they gave added zest to our instincts for research, to our intellectual life. Often (do you remember?) we investigated one by one those marvelous hypotheses which give us our desire for eternity. But it was for love that we were both eager. And I, I continue to tremble. Your life, you told me last night, could no longer exist without mine. But mine belongs to you for as long as you will. May it glide softly into yours without ever harming it! Without taking it, let it be of service to you. If you knew! I have no more confidence: it has never been very powerful in me, and these last ten years have killed it. I no longer believe in the happiness I can give, and I would offer my life for yours. Direct my weakness, my love: I feel so old and so young at the same time, and I love you.
"ANNE."
A business man is always somewhat skeptical about the sentimentality of love letters. From the facts which are an integral part of almost every brief, he knows with what euphemisms or what lack of perspective they are worded. But Philippe had been too often to the Château in former days not to recognize the candor of the young girl in this tone of passionate exaltation and anticipated discouragement. He only divined in her a more intense melancholy, like a latent languor. Her eyes must be less golden, her mouth more drooping, her body more slender. In a word, she must have partially lost her physical charm, which explained her unanswerable fear of the future, and Philippe was sufficiently cruel to rejoice in all those pictures which made her less desirable.