The years pass on and Marie Antoinette is about to be beheaded. Her one friend now is Elise Dupuy, who is herself a working girl and beloved by the people and the leaders of the revolution.
Elise makes an effort to save the Queen but is unsuccessful.
One winter afternoon, returning to the secret garden near the Little Trianon, again she wanders about remembering and regretting her lost friend.
At first she is walking there alone, but later some one joins her, a young man who is her lover, a French workman, a printer by trade and a member of the Sans-Culotte.
At first he pleads vainly for Elise’s love, but in the end she agrees to their marriage, provided she is to be allowed to continue her work among the poor.
Afterwards as the young lovers walk about in the garden together, Bettina’s impressions became more confused.
Half a dozen times during the long night, while in the act of composing her story, Bettina had fallen asleep, only to awaken at intervals and go on with it. In her dreams the story had often grown strangely confused with her own personal experience.
Now, as a matter of fact, long after the coming of day, when first she heard human voices speaking close beside her in the garden, during the first few moments of waking, Bettina had still to struggle between the reality and her dream.
Several hours she had been half seated, half reclining on a small stone settee protected from the wind by evergreens. During the night she had often walked about at different periods of time in order to keep her blood in circulation.
Yet now, trying to rise and ask for aid and also to explain her presence in the garden, Bettina found herself scarcely able to move. She had not realized that she had grown so benumbed and cramped from her exposure to the winter night.