The immense mourning of human hearts appears to us.  We dare not name it yet; but we dare not let it not appear in all that we say.

* * * * * *

Then we see a woman, climbing the footpath and coming nearer to us.  It is Marthe, grown up, full-blown.  She says a few words to us and then goes away, smiling.  She smiles, she who plays a part in our drama.  The likeness which formerly haunted me now haunts Marie, too—­both of us, side by side, and without saying it, harbored the same thought, to see that child growing up and showing what Marie was.

Marie confesses all, all at once, “I was only my youth and my beauty, like all women.  And there go my youth and beauty—­Marthe!  Then, I——?” In anguish she goes on, “I’m not old yet, since I’m only thirty-five, but I’ve aged very quickly; I’ve some white hairs that you can see, close to; I’m wrinkled and my eyes have sunk.  I’m here, in life, to live, to occupy my time; but I’m nothing more than I am!  Of course, I’m still alive, but the future comes to an end before life does.  Ah, it’s really only youth that has a place in life.  All young faces are alike and go from one to the other without ever being deceived.  They wipe out and destroy all the rest, and they make the others see themselves as they are, so that they become useless.”

She is right!  When the young woman stands up she takes, in fact, the other’s place in the ideal and in the human heart, and makes of the other a returning ghost.  It is true.  I knew it.  Ah, I did not know it was so true!  It is too obvious.  I cannot deny it.  Again a cry of assent rises to my lips and prevents me from saying, “No.”

I cannot turn away from Marthe’s advent, nor as I look at her, from recognizing Marie.  I know she has had several little love-affairs.  Just now she is alone.  She is alone, but she will soon be leaning—­yes, phantom or reality, man is not far from her.  It is dazzling.  Most certainly, I no longer think as I used to do that it is a sort of duty to satisfy the selfish promptings one has, and I have now got an inward veneration for right-doing; but all the same, if that being came to me, I know well that I should become, before all, and in spite of all, an immense cry of delight.

Marie falls back upon her idea, obdurately, and says, “A woman only lives by love and for love.  When she’s no longer good for that she’s no longer anything.”

She repeats, “You see—­I’m nothing any more.”

Ah, she is at the bottom of her abyss!  She is at the extremity of a woman’s mourning!  She is not thinking only of me.  Her thought is higher and vaster.  She is thinking of all the woman she is, of all that love is, of all possible things when she says, “I’m no longer anything.”  And I—­I am only he who is present with her just now, and no help whatever is left her to look for from any one.