n in the same place
with a box in her hands. She says:

"There it is. Those are our letters."

"Our letters, our beautiful letters!" she goes on. "I could really say
they're more beautiful than all others. We know them by heart--but
would you like us to read them again? _You_ read them--there's still
light enough--and let me see how happy we've been."

She hands the casket to me. The letters we wrote each other during our
engagement are arranged in it.

"That one," she says, "is the first from you. Is it? Yes--no, it
isn't; do you think it is?"

I take the letter, murmur it, and then read it aloud. It spoke of the
future, and said, "In a little while, how happy we shall be!"

She comes near, lowers her head, reads the date and whispers:

"Nineteen-two; it's been dead for thirteen years--it's a long time.
No, it isn't a long time--I don't know what it ought to be. Here's
another--read it."

I go on denuding the letters. We quickly find out what a mistake it
was to say we know them by heart. This one has no date--simply the
name of a day--Monday, and we believed that would be enough! Now, it
is entirely lost and become barren, this anonymous letter in the middle
of the rest.

"We don't know them by heart any more," Marie confesses. "Remember
ourselves? How could we remember all that?"

* * * * * *

This reading was like that of a book once already read in bygone days.
It could not revive again the diligent and fervent hours when our pens
were moving--and our lips, too, a little. Indistinctly it brought
back, with unfathomable gaps, the adventure lived in three days by
others, the people that we were. When I read a letter from her which
spoke of caresses to come, Marie stammered, "And she dared to write
that!" but she did not blush and was not confused.

Then she shook her head a little, and said dolefully:

"What a lot of things we have hidden away, little by little, in spite
of ourselves! How strong people must be to forget so much!"

She was beginning to catch a glimpse of a bottomless abyss, and to
despair. Suddenly she broke in:

"That's enough! We can't read them again. We can't understand what's
written. That's enough--don't take my illusion away."

She spoke like the poor madwoman of the streets, and added in a
whisper:

"This morning, when I opened that box where the letters were shut up,
some little flies flew out."

We stop reading