"How false! What an absurdity! but it must have been believed, for our happiness was so simple and natural that the world, not understanding true love, could not give us credit for it. Besides, we liked to make a sort of mystery of our felicity, so how could society, accustomed as it is to scandal, suppose for an instant that a young wife and a charming husband of equal position and birth could go the length of adoring and wishing to live for one another? Alas! though, nothing was ever more true." "Now, at last, all is explained clearly to my mind. Do you remember the absurd and malicious interpretation of that race and the story about Ismaël?" "Of course I do." "Very well; your marriage was interpreted with about as much truth. As nothing was more evident than the irreproachableness of your conduct, slander arranged for you a mysterious subterranean life. I assure you it is astonishing to listen to. They even told of disguises and a little far away house in the suburbs." "If I was not so sad, I would smile with you, my friend, at all these wicked falsehoods, but I have got to a period in my souvenirs when all is so cruel, so distressing," and she held out her hand to me, "that I have hardly courage enough to speak of it. After three years of complete and passionate happiness,--after--" Marguerite could say no more, she burst into tears, and it was some moments before she continued. "Yes, yes, I know," said I to her as I knelt before her, "I know how admirable and devoted you were all that dreadful time. Now that I have looked into your soul, now that I know who it was that filled it, and fills it still with his souvenir, I understand how agonising such an eternal separation must be to you."