“Then you still love me?”

“It is now that I love you.  I thought I loved you when you were only a phantom.  Now, you are the being in whose hands I have put my soul.  It is true that you are mine!  What have I done to obtain the greatest, the only, good of this world?  And those men with whom the earth is covered think they are living!  I alone live!  Tell me, what have I done to obtain you?”

“Oh, what had to be done, I did.  I say this to you frankly.  If we have reached that point, the fault is mine.  You see, women do not always confess it, but it is always their fault.  So, whatever may happen, I never will reproach you for anything.”

An agile troupe of yelling beggars, guides, and coachmen surrounded them with an importunity wherein was mingled the gracefulness which Italians never lose.  Their subtlety made them divine that these were lovers, and they knew that lovers are prodigal.  Dechartre threw coin to them, and they all returned to their happy laziness.

A municipal guard received the visitors.  Madame Martin regretted that there was no monk.  The white gown of the Dominicans was so beautiful 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: