"'What has happened?' I stammered. 'Trust me, I implore you!'
"I heard her sobbing—and minutes seemed to pass. It was horrible. I thought my heart would burst while I shuddered at her sobs—the sobbing of a woman I could not reach.
"'I can tell you nothing,' she said, when she was calmer; 'only that we are speaking together for the last time.'
"'But why—why? Is it that you are leaving France?'
"'I cannot tell you,' she repeated. 'I have had to swear that to myself.'
"Oh, I raved to her! I was desperate. I tried to wring her name from her then—I besought her to confess where she was hidden. The space between us frenzied me. It was frightful, it was like a nightmare, that struggle to tear the truth from a woman whom I could not clasp or see.
"'My dear,' she said, 'there are some things that are beyond human power. They are not merely difficult, or unwise, or mad—they are impossible. You have begged the impossible of me. You will never hear me again, it is far from likely we shall ever meet—and if one day we do, you will not even know that it is I. But I love you. I should like to think that you believe it, for I love you very dearly. Now say good-bye to me. My arms are round your neck, dear heart—I kiss you on the lips.'
"It was the end. She was lost. A moment before, I had felt her presence in my senses; now I stood in an empty room, mocked by a futile apparatus. My friend, if you have ever yearned to see a woman whose whereabouts you did not know—ever exhausted yourself tramping some district in the hope of finding her—you may realise what I feel; for remember that by comparison your task was easy—I am even ignorant of this woman's arrondissement and appearance. She left me helpless. The telephone had given her—the telephone had taken her away. All that remained to me was the mechanism on a table."
* * * * *
Noulens turned on the couch at last—and, turning, he could not fail to see his wife. I was spellbound.