aven and earth into love? And they knew how to make a woman
delirious with songs and with words. Yes, perhaps there was more of
illusion than of reality in our passion; but these illusions lift you
into the clouds, while realities always leave you trailing in the dust.
If others have loved me more, through these two I have understood, felt
and worshipped love."

Suddenly she began to weep.

She wept silently, shedding tears of despair.

I pretended not to see, looking off into the distance. She resumed,
after a few minutes:

"You see, monsieur, with nearly every one the heart ages with the body.
But this has not happened with me. My body is sixty-nine years old,
while my poor heart is only twenty. And that is the reason why I live
all alone, with my flowers and my dreams."

There was a long silence between us. She grew calmer and continued,
smiling:

"How you would laugh at me, if you knew, if you knew how I pass my
evenings, when the weather is fine. I am ashamed and I pity myself at
the same time."

Beg as I might, she would not tell me what she did. Then I rose to
leave.

"Already!" she exclaimed.

And as I said that I wished to dine at Monte Carlo, she asked timidly:

"Will you not dine with me? It would give me a great deal of pleasure."

I accepted at once. She rang, delighted, and after giving some orders to
the little maid she took me over her house.

A kind of glass-enclosed veranda, filled with shrubs, opened into the
dining-room, revealing at the farther end the long avenue of orange
trees extending to the foot of the mountain. A low seat, hidden by
plants, indicated that the old actress often came there to sit down.

Then we went into the garden, to look at the flowers. Evening fell
softly, one of those calm, moist evenings when the earth breathes forth
all her perfumes. Daylight was almost gone when we sat down at table.
The dinner was good and it lasted a long time, and we became intimate
friends, she and I, when she understood what a profound sympathy she
had aroused in my heart. She had taken two thimblefuls of wine, as the
phrase goes, and had grown more confiding and expansive.

"Come, let us look at the moon," she said. "I adore the good moon. She
has been the witness of my most intense joys. It seems to me that all my
memories are there, and that I need only look at her to bring them all
back to me. And even--some times--in the evening--I offer to myself a
pretty play--yes, pretty--