ne of these I had quite definitely composed. You have already heard it.
'Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over the shingle.'

These words, which pleased me much, were to do double duty. They were
to recur. They were to be, by a fine stroke, the very last words of
my tale, their tranquillity striking a sharp ironic contrast with the
stress of what had just been narrated. I had, you see, advanced further
in the form of my tale than in the substance. But even the form was as
yet vague. What, exactly, was to happen after Mlle. Ange'lique and M.
Joumand (as I provisionally called him) had rushed back past me into the
casino? It was clear that I must hear the whole inner history from the
lips of one or the other of them. Which? Should M. Joumand stagger out
on to the terrace, sit down heavily at the table next to mine, bury his
head in his hands, and presently, in broken words, blurt out to me all
that might be of interest?... '"And I tell you I gave up everything for
her--everything." He stared at me with his old hopeless eyes. "She
is more than the fiend I have described to you. Yet I swear to you,
monsieur, that if I had anything left to give, it should be hers."

'Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over the shingle.'

Or should the lady herself be my informant? For a while, I rather leaned
to this alternative. It was more exciting, it seemed to make the writer
more signally a man of the world. On the other hand, it was less
simple to manage. Wronged persons might be ever so communicative, but
I surmised that persons in the wrong were reticent. Mlle. Ange'lique,
therefore, would have to be modified by me in appearance and behaviour,
toned down, touched up; and poor M. Joumand must look like a man of whom
one could believe anything.... 'She ceased speaking. She gazed down at
the fragments of her fan, and then, as though finding in them an image
of her own life, whispered, "To think what I once was, monsieur!--what,
but for him, I might be, even now!" She buried her face in her hands,
then stared out into the night. Suddenly she uttered a short, harsh
laugh.

'Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over the shingle.'

I decided that I must choose the first of these two ways. It was the
less chivalrous as well as the less lurid way, but clearly it was the
more artistic as well as the easier. The 'chose vue,' the 'tranche de la
vie'--this was the thing to aim at. Honesty was the best policy. I must
be nothing if