* * * * *

Then we see a woman, climbing the footpath and coming nearer to us. It
is Marthe, grown up, full-blown. She says a few words to us and then
goes away, smiling. She smiles, she who plays a part in our drama.
The likeness which formerly haunted me now haunts Marie, too--both of
us, side by side, and without saying it, harbored the same thought, to
see that child growing up and showing what Marie was.

Marie confesses all, all at once, "I was only my youth and my beauty,
like all women. And _there_ go my youth and beauty--Marthe! Then,
I----?" In anguish she goes on, "I'm not old yet, since I'm only
thirty-five, but I've aged very quickly; I've some white hairs that you
can see, close to; I'm wrinkled and my eyes have sunk. I'm here, in
life, to live, to occupy my time; but I'm nothing more than I am! Of
course, I'm still alive, but the future comes to an end before life
does. Ah, it's really only youth that has a place in life. All young
faces are alike and go from one to the other without ever being
deceived. They wipe out and destroy all the rest, and they make the
others see themselves as they are, so that they become useless."

She is right! When the young woman stands up she takes, in fact, the
other's place in the ideal and in the human heart, and makes of the
other a returning ghost. It is true. I knew it. Ah, I did not know
it was so true! It is too obvious. I cannot deny it. Again a cry of
assent rises to my lips and prevents me from saying, "No."

I cannot turn away from Marthe's advent, nor as I look at her, from
recognizing Marie. I know she has had several little love-affairs.
Just now she is alone. She is alone, but she will soon be
leaning--yes, phantom or reality, man is not far from her. It is
dazzling. Most certainly, I no longer think as I used to do that it is
a sort of duty to satisfy the selfish promptings one has, and I have
now got an inward veneration for right-doing; but all the same, if that
being came to me, I know well that I should become, before all, and in
spite of all, an immense cry of delight.

Marie falls back upon her idea, obdurately, and says, "A woman only
lives by love and for love. When she's no longer good for that she's
no longer anything."

She repeats, "You see--I'm nothing any more."

Ah, she is at the bottom of her abyss! She is at the extremity of a
woman's mourning! She is not thinking only of me.