She took the Duke's hand.
"Say you are not sorry that you loved me?"
"I love you always!"
She clapped her hands with a silvery laugh, "Genevieve, Genevieve, he loves me still."
And she hid her head on the young girl's arm. Maurice led the Duke away, overcome. He looked questioningly at the painter.
"No, she will not be light-headed long, the Doctors all agree about that, but her memory will have to come back by degrees a little at a time. She recognized you. She remembered her love and yours. That is a great step. Her youth, her love, and time will be, I believe, certain restorers."
The Duke left soon after they had taken Esperance away.
In Belgium the Countess had prepared for her beloved daughter. This beautiful woman of forty, so charming, so handsome in her mauve mourning, had already become an old woman whose movements were ever slow and sad. Her back was bent, from constantly kneeling beside her son's grave. Her black clothes reflected the deeper gloom of her expression. And to those who had seen her a few months before, she was almost unrecognizable.
Poor little Esperance regained her health very slowly. Her mind seemed entirely clear only on one subject, the theatre. Little by little she remembered everything connected with her art. She repeated with Genevieve and Jean Perliez the scenes they had given at the Competition. She worked hard on Musset's On ne badine pas avec l'amour; then busied herself with preparations for her friend's marriage. She did not know that the Duke was to be a witness.
"But," she would often object, "you must have two witnesses, and you have only one."