“Oh, what a pity it is,” she said to herself, “that we cannot remember. I always feel as if we had lived since the beginning and shall go on till the end—if end there is; but if one only had a memory to match, how wonderful it would be. If I could but see this place just once as it was hundreds of years ago, with the Greek people walking about and the city rising up about them. Now it looks so thoroughly awake, with its great new buildings and horrible improvements; but if it ever sleeps, how wonderful its dreams must be. If one could get inside them and see it all as it once was.” . . . She turned her face longingly towards the port, at the far end of the Cannebière. “I am so hungry to see everything, and to know everything,” she said to herself—“so hungry for all the things I have never had.—I wonder if I shall die soon—I can’t go on living like this, longing and waiting and hoping and grasping nothing.—I wish I could see the water. If I had courage I would drive down and look at it—or walk past those people sitting out on the pavement, and go down to the sea. There might be a ship sailing by towards England, and I should know how his ship will look if it, too, ever sails by. Or a ship going on towards India, and I could look after it, knowing that every moment it was getting nearer and nearer to him. To-morrow I will find out precisely where the P. & O.’s sail from for Bombay; then I shall be able to guess what it all looked like when he set his foot on board, a year ago. Oh, thank God, I may think of him a little—that I am free—that it is not wickedness to think of him—or to love him,” she added, with almost a sob. She got up and looked round the room. It was nearly dark. She could see the outline of the furniture and of her own figure dimly reflected in the long glass of the wardrobe. “The place is so full of shadows they frighten me; but I am frightened at everything.” She flung herself down again on the couch at the foot of the bed. “I wonder if the people who have always done right ever for a moment imagine that the people who have done wrong can suffer as much—oh, a thousand times more than themselves. They seem to imagine that sin is a sort of armour against suffering, and it does not matter how many blows are administered to those who have gone off the beaten track.” She pillowed her head on her arms and watched the moving reflection of the light from the street. In imagination she stared through it at the long years before her, wondering, almost in terror, how they would be filled. “I am so young, and I may live so long.” There was a knock at her bedroom door. “Come in,” she cried, thankful for any interruption. “A letter for Madame.”