"... Your love?" finished the Countess softly. "Surely you have loved some one?"
Rénèe hesitated a moment then answered in a low voice—
"Yes, I loved. Some one who is not of my station and who hardly knows my name nor my face. He—he went to the war, and he, like all, is quite ruined now and quite desolate. Probably I shall never see him again."
She stopped suddenly and faced the Countess, her warm rich beauty glowing in the grey air against the grey background of garden wall and castle.
"That is my story and my life," she said. "What would you do with such a life, Madame?"
Truly the Countess did not know; her own years had been so full that she could not picture an empty existence.
"You cannot understand," added Rénèe, "what it is to mourn the loss of what you never had."
"You will love again," said the Countess, whose outlook was eminently practical and sane, "or at least you will take a husband, and then your life will be full."
"Some women love once only, alas for them!" answered Rénèe, "perhaps it is a foolishness, but one cannot change one's heart."
Then she shrank into herself and was once more enfolded in reserve deeper than before, as if afraid of having said too much.