They stood face to face, not finding words. They felt a certain shyness, which they wished by turns to banish and to prolong. Jean could see against Paule’s cheek the long lashes shading the downcast eyes.
“Listen,” he said at last. “In Marcel’s tunic there was something beside your mother’s last letter—This photograph was found too. I thought I would give it back to you—yourself.”
He gave her a faded photograph, in which she recognised a path in the garden of Le Maupas and on it two little girls of ten or twelve—one fair, the other dark; one sitting quiet, gazing with eyes astonished at the world, the other caught in a lively pose. They were Alice and herself.
“Oh!” she said. And in a dull voice she asked: “Did he never speak of her to you?”
“No, never.”
She let the picture fall dully on the gravel of the path. Unable to contain herself any longer, she wept helplessly.
Jean took her hand.
“I often thought,” said he, “out there in Africa, how stupid fate was. Why did I not die in his place? Nobody would have wept for me.”
What could she answer? Her dark eyes shone with a sudden light. She picked up the photograph before he had time to bend down.
“Thank you, Jean. Come and see us again soon. It would be a charity.”