“You knew the Marquis de Re?  At sixty-five he had retained his strength and his youth.  He set the fashion and was loved.  Young men copied his frockcoat, his monocle, his gestures, his exquisite insolence, his amusing fads.  Suddenly he abandoned society, closed his house, sold his stable, ceased to show himself.  Do you remember, Therese, his sudden disappearance?  You had been married a short time.  He called on you often.  One fine day people learned that he had quitted Paris.  This is the place where he had come in winter.  People tried to find a reason for his sudden retreat; some thought he had run away under the influence of sorrow or humiliation, or from fear that the world might see him grow old.  He was afraid of old age more than of anything else.  For seven years he has lived in retirement from society; he has not gone out of the castle once.  He receives at the Guerric two or three old men who were his companions in youth.  This gate is opened for them only.  Since his retirement no one has seen him; no one ever will see him.  He shows the same care to conceal himself that he had formerly to show himself.  He has not suffered from his decline.  He exists in a sort of living death.”

And Therese, recalling the amiable old man who had wished to finish gloriously with her his life of gallantry, turned her head and looked at the Guerric lifting its four towers above the gray summits of oaks.

On their return she said she had a headache and that she would not take dinner.  She locked herself in her room and drew from her jewel casket the lamentable letter.  She read over the last page.

“The thought that you belong to another burns me.  And then, I did not wish that man to be the one.”

It was a fixed idea.  He had written three times on the same leaf these words:  “I did not wish that man to be the one.”

She, too, had only one idea:  not to lose him.  Not to lose him, she would have said anything, she would have done anything.  She went to her table and wrote, under the spur of a tender, and plaintive violence, a letter wherein she repeated like a groan:  “I love you, I love you!  I never have loved any one but you.  You are alone, alone—­do you hear?—­in my mind, in me.  Do not think of what that wretched man said.  Listen to me!  I never loved any one, I swear, any one, before you.”

As she was writing, the soft sigh of the sea accompanied her own sigh.  She wished to say, she believed she was saying, real things; and all that she was saying was true of the truth of her love.  She heard the heavy step of her father on the stairway.  She hid her letter and opened the door.  Montessuy asked her whether she felt better.

“I came,” he said, “to say good-night to you, and to ask you something.  It is probable that I shall meet Le Menil at the races.  He goes there every year.  If I meet him, darling, would you have any objection to my inviting him to come here for a few days?  Your husband thinks he would be agreeable company for you.  We might give him the blue room.”