He tried to speak and could not, for now sobs were choking him. She listened to the stifling in his breast as he leaned against her. Then, seized again by the selfish anguish of love that had been gnawing at her so long, she said in the heartrending tone in which one realizes a horrible misfortune, “My God, how you love her!”

Once more he confessed. “Ah! Yes, I love her!”

She thought a few moments, and resumed, “You never loved me so?”

He did not deny it, for it was one of those hours where one speaks the whole truth, and murmured, “No, I was too young then!”

She was surprised. “Too young? Why?”

“Because life was too sweet. It is only at our age that one loves desperately.”

She asked, “Does what you feel when near her resemble what you used to feel when near me?”

“Yes and no—and yet it’s almost the same thing. I’ve loved you as much as anyone may love a woman. I love her like yourself, since she is yourself, but that love has become something irresistible, destructive, stronger than death. I belong to it as a burning building belongs to the flames.”