This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
By ANATOLE FRANCE
The next day, in the hidden pavilion of the Via Alfieri, she found himpreoccupied. She tried to distract him with ardent gayety, with thesweetness of pressing intimacy, with superb humility. But he remainedsombre. He had all night meditated, labored over, and recognized hissadness. He had found reasons for suffering. His thought had broughttogether the hand that dropped a letter in the post-box before the bronzeSan Marco and the dreadful unknown who had been seen at the station. NowJacques Dechartre gave a face and a name to the cause of his suffering.In the grandmother's armchair where Therese had been seated on the day ofher welcome, and which she had this time offered to him, he was assailedby painful images; while she, bent over one of his arms, enveloped himwith her warm embrace and her loving heart. She divined too well what hewas suffering to ask it of him simply.
In order to bring him back to pleasanter ideas, she recalled the secretsof the room where they were and reminiscences of their walks through thecity. She was gracefully familiar.
"The little spoon you gave me, the little red lily spoon, I use for mytea in the morning. And I know by the pleasure I feel at seeing it whenI wake how much I love you."
Then, as he replied only in sentences sad and evasive, she said:
"I am near you, but you do not care for me. You are preoccupied by someidea that I do not fathom. Yet I am alive, and an idea is nothing."
"An idea is nothing? Do you think so? One may be wretched or happy foran idea; one may live and one may die for an idea. Well, I am thinking."
"Of what are you thinking?"
"Why do you ask? You know very well I am thinking of what I heard lastnight, which you had concealed from me. I am thinking of your meeting atthe station, which was not due to chance, but which a letter had caused,a letter dropped—remember!—in the postbox of San Michele. Oh, I do notreproach you for it. I have not the right. But why did you giveyourself to me if you were not free?"
She thought she must tell an untruth.
"You mean some one whom I met at the station yesterday? I assure you itwas the most ordinary meeting in the world."
He was painfully impressed with the fact that she did not dare to namethe one she spoke of. He, too, avoided pronouncing that name.
"Therese, he had not come for you? You did not know he was in Florence?He is nothing more to you than a man whom you meet socially? He is notthe one who, when absent, made you say to me, 'I can not?' He is nothingto you?"
She replied resolutely:
"He comes to my house at times. He was introduced to me by GeneralLariviere. I have nothing more to say to you about him. I assure you heis of no interest to me, and I can not conceive what may be in your mindabout him."
She felt a sort of satisfaction at repudiating the man who had insistedagainst her; with so much harshness and violence, upon his rights ofownership. But she was in haste to get out of her tortuous path. Sherose and