She knew where that was, Lungarno Acciaoli.  She had gone there at sunset, and she had seen the rays of the sun on the agitated surface of the river.  Then night had come, the murmur of the waters in the silence, the words and the looks that had troubled her, the first kiss of her lover, the beginning of incomparable love.  Oh, yes, she recalled Lungarno Acciaoli and the river-side beyond the old bridge—­Great Britain Hotel—­she knew:  a big stone facade on the quay.  It was fortunate, since he would come, that he had gone there.  He might as easily have gone to the Hotel de la Ville, where Dechartre was.  It was fortunate they were not side by side in the same corridor.  Lungarno Acciaoli!  The dead body which they had seen pass was at peace somewhere in the little flowery cemetery.

“Number 18.”

It was a bare hotel room, with a stove in the Italian fashion, a set of brushes displayed on the table, and a time-table.  Not a book, not a journal.  He was there; she saw suffering on his bony face, a look of fever.  This produced on her a sad impression.  He waited a moment for a word, a gesture; but she dared do nothing.  He offered a chair.  She refused it and remained standing.

“Therese, something has happened of which I do not know.  Speak.”

After a moment of silence, she replied, with painful slowness: 

“My friend, when I was in Paris, why did you go away from me?”

By the sadness of her accent he believed, he wished to believe, in the expression of an affectionate reproach.  His face colored.  He replied, ardently: 

“Ah, if I could have foreseen!  That hunting party—­I cared little for it, as you may think!  But you—­your letter, that of the twenty-seventh”—­he had a gift for dates—­“has thrown me into a horrible anxiety.  Something has happened.  Tell me everything.”

“My friend, I believed you had ceased to love me.”

“But now that you know the contrary?”

“Now—­”

She paused, her arms fell before her and her hands were joined.

Then, with affected tranquillity, she continued: 

“Well, my friend, we took each other without knowing.  One never knows.  You are young; younger than I, since we are of the same age.  You have, doubtless, projects for the future.”

He looked at her proudly.  She continued: 

“Your family, your mother, your aunts, your uncle the General, have projects for you.  That is natural.  I might have become an obstacle.  It is better that I should disappear from your life.  We shall keep a fond remembrance of each other.”

She extended her gloved hand.  He folded his arms: 

“Then, you do not want me?  You have made me happy, as no other man ever was, and you think now to brush me aside?  Truly, you seem to think you have finished with me.  What have you come to say to me?  That it was a liaison, which is easily broken?  That people take each other, quit each other—­well, no!  You are not a person whom one can easily quit.”