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under the arcades of the cloister!

They visited the cells where, on the bare plaster, Fra Angelico, aided by
his brother Benedetto, painted innocent pictures for his companions.

"Do you recall the winter night when, meeting you before the Guimet
Museum, I accompanied you to the narrow street bordered by small gardens
which leads to the Billy Quay? Before separating we stopped a moment on
the parapet along which runs a thin boxwood hedge. You looked at that
boxwood, dried by winter. And when you went away I looked at it for a
long time."

They were in the cell wherein Savonarola lived. The guide showed to them
the portrait and the relics of the martyr.

"What could there have been in me that you liked that day? It was dark."

"I saw you walk. It is in movements that forms speak. Each one of your
steps told me the secrets of your charming beauty. Oh! my imagination was
never discreet in anything that concerned you. I did not dare to speak to
you. When I saw you, it frightened me. It frightened me because you could
do everything for me. When you were present, I adored you tremblingly.
When you were far from me, I felt all the impieties of desire."

"I did not suspect this. But do you recall the first time we saw each
other, when Paul Vence introduced you? You were seated near a screen. You
were looking at the miniatures. You said to me: 'This lady, painted by
Siccardi, resembles Andre Chenier's mother.' I replied to you: 'She is my
husband's great-grandmother. How did Andre Chenier's mother look?' And
you said: 'There is a portrait of her: a faded Levantine.'"

He excused himself and thought that he had not spoken so impertinently.

"You did. My memory is better than yours."

They were walking in the white silence of the convent. They saw the cell
which Angelico had ornamented with the loveliest painting. And there,
before the Virgin who, in the pale sky, receives from God the Father the
immortal crown, he took Therese in his arms and placed a kiss on her
lips, almost in view of two Englishwomen who were walking through the
corridors, consulting their Baedeker. She said to him:

"We must not forget Saint Anthony's cell."

"Therese, I am suffering in my happiness from everything that is yours
and that escapes me. I am suffering because you do not live for me alone.
I wish to have you wholly, and to have had you in the past."

She shrugged her shoulders a little.

"Oh, the past!"

"The past is the only h