She hands the casket to me.  The letters we wrote each other during our engagement are arranged in it.

“That one,” she says, “is the first from you.  Is it?  Yes—­no, it isn’t; do you think it is?”

I take the letter, murmur it, and then read it aloud.  It spoke of the future, and said, “In a little while, how happy we shall be!”

She comes near, lowers her head, reads the date and whispers: 

“Nineteen-two; it’s been dead for thirteen years—­it’s a long time.  No, it isn’t a long time—­I don’t know what it ought to be.  Here’s another—­read it.”

I go on denuding the letters.  We quickly find out what a mistake it was to say we know them by heart.  This one has no date—­simply the name of a day—­Monday, and we believed that would be enough!  Now, it is entirely lost and become barren, this anonymous letter in the middle of the rest.

“We don’t know them by heart any more,” Marie confesses.  “Remember ourselves?  How could we remember all that?”

* * * * * *

This reading was like that of a book once already read in bygone days.  It could not revive again the diligent and fervent hours when our pens were moving—­and our lips, too, a little.  Indistinctly it brought back, with unfathomable gaps, the adventure lived in three days by others, the people that we were.  When I read a letter from her which spoke of caresses to come, Marie stammered, “And she dared to write that!” but she did not blush and was not confused.

Then she shook her head a little, and said dolefully: 

“What a lot of things we have hidden away, little by little, in spite of ourselves!  How strong people must be to forget so much!”

She was beginning to catch a glimpse of a bottomless abyss, and to despair.  Suddenly she broke in: 

“That’s enough!  We can’t read them again.  We can’t understand what’s written.  That’s enough—­don’t take my illusion away.”

She spoke like the poor madwoman of the streets, and added in a whisper: 

“This morning, when I opened that box where the letters were shut up, some little flies flew out.”

We stop reading the letters a moment, and look at them.  The ashes of life!  All that we can remember is almost nothing.  Memory is greater than we are, but memory is living and mortal as well.  These letters, these unintelligible flowers, these bits of lace and of paper, what are they?  Around these flimsy things what is there left?  We are handling the casket together.  Thus we are completely attached in the hollow of our hands.

* * * * * *

And yet we went on reading.

But something strange is growing gradually greater; it grasps us, it surprises us hopelessly—­every letter speaks of the future.

In vain Marie said to me: 

“What about afterwards?  Try another—­later on.”