tched, mossy roof of the old wash-house a few steps from the mill
still displaying its dog's-eared edges. The same vistas across the green
breaches between the houses.

Every corner of the town held out a memory to me--here a two-year-old
memory, here a distinct vision crouching. I called to the vision and
welcomed it. My life was not dead, and my heart was open and there was
still a man to love me....

I had been unjust in the black moment of despair. My share of love and
light still remained. Did he know I was a widow? Since he had been taken
prisoner six months ago, no news had reached me and I didn't know if he
had received any of my letters.

The broad sunshine expanded my chest and warmed up a vision so tender--a
hope or a memory--that I was stung by a pang of remorse and almost felt
like chasing it away.

I reached the center of the town, where there were more people and
especially more well-to-do people.

Feminine figures, which I recognized, came toward me at a dull gait. I
knew them; I had seen these old ladies at prayers two years before. They
wore the same dresses and the same hats, the sort you don't see anywhere
except in the provinces.... Hypocritical hands as I passed the houses,
lifted the crocheted curtains. I was preceded by mystery and followed by
whisperings.

Every passerby seemed to be blaming me for the dazzling sunlight which
my eyes were embracing; every house scowled, and the whole street, in
spite of the pleasant weather, wore veritable mourning, not mere sadness
and solemnity, but mourning, and the people looked as though they were
in a slow funeral procession, the women strangled in black, upholstered
in crepe, and buried alive in their hoods and veils.

The Cathedral square was resplendent with profane joy. The birds swooped
from one to the other of the great, white-dappled plane-trees, and every
now and then one perched on the statue in the fountain, a clumsy girl
with petticoat of stone and turned-up sleeves, a decent bosom bared, a
sheaf in one arm, and an eternally dried-up urn in the other arm.
Through its high lanceolate windows and the tracery of the two
rose-windows Notre Dame was drinking in light and making mock of its
ancient front.

It was a brilliant day, and the world rejoiced. I tasted the savor of
living. In spite of myself I fell into the nervous, elastic step of old
and drank in the living air like an intoxicating elixir.

An idea took lodgment--he was familiar