Not a spot on
forehead, cheek, chin--anywhere. Her skin was as smooth as if it had
been polished. I felt as though that exquisite delicate face were
something ever in flight that had paused for an instant for my sake,
and I stammered, almost with tears in my voice, 'It is too much! It is
too much!' Everybody looked on her as a princess. In the streets of
the town the shopkeepers were glad to see her pass by. Did she not
have a queenly air as she sat half-reclining on the great carved stone
bench in the park, that great stone bench which was now a kind of empty
tomb?

"For a moment in the midst of time I knew how much I had loved her, she
who had been alive and who was dead, who had been the sun and who was
now a kind of obscure spring under the earth.

"And I also mourned the human heart. That night I understood the
extremes of what I had felt. Then the inevitable forgetfulness came,
the time came when it did not sadden me to remember that I had mourned.

. . . . .

"That is the confession I wanted to make to you, Anna. I wanted this
story of love, which is a quarter of a century old, never to end. It
was so real and thrilling, it was such a big thing, that I told it to
you in all simplicity, to you who will survive. After that I came to
love you and I do love you. I offer to you as to a sovereign the image
of the little creature who will always be seventeen."

He sighed. What he said proved to me once more the inadequacy of
religion to comfort the human heart.

"Now I adore you and you alone--I who adored her, I whom she adored.
How can there possibly be a paradise where one would find happiness
again?"

His voice rose, his inert arms trembled. He came out of his profound
immobility for a moment.

"Ah, /you/ are the one, /you/ are the one--/you/ alone."

And a great cry of impotence broke from him.

"Anna, Anna, if you and I had been really married, if we had lived
together as man and wife, if we had had children, if you had been
beside me as you are this evening, but really beside me!"

He fell back. He had cried out so loud that even if there had been no
breach in the wall, I should have heard him in my room. He voiced his
whole dream, he threw it out passionately. This sincerity, which was
indifferent to everything, had a definite significance which bruised my
heart.

"Forgive me. Forgive me. It is almost blasphemy. I could not help
it."

He stopped. You felt his will-power ma