Standing before the mirror, half undressed, Marianne was arranging her hair. Her white shoulders, her still heaving and oppressed bosom were still exposed within the border of her fine chemisette. She felt her wrists, instinctively examining her bracelets, and looked toward the bed in an absent sort of way as if to see if some charm had not slipped from them. "Guy," she said abruptly, but in a tone which she tried to make endearing, "promise me that you will not refuse what I am about to ask you." "I promise." They now quite naturally substituted for the "thou" of affectionate address, the more formal "you," secretly realizing that after the intertwining of their bodies, their real individualities independent of all surprises or sensual appetite, would find themselves face to face. "I could wish that our affection--and it is profound, is it not, Guy?--dated only from the moment that we have just passed." "I do not regret the past," he said. "Nor I! Yet I would like to efface it--yes, by a single stroke!" She held between her white fingers some rebellious little locks of hair that had come out, which she had rolled and twisted, and casting them into the clear flame, she said: "See! to burn it like that!--_Pft!_--" "Burn it?" Lissac repeated. He had left the window, returned to Marianne and smiling in his turn, he said: "Why burn it?--Because it is tiresome or because it is dangerous?" "Both!" she replied. She paused for a moment before continuing, drew up over her arms the lace of her chemisette, then half bending her head, and looking at Guy like a creditor of love she said: "You still have my letters, my dear?" "Your letters?" "Those of the old days?" "That is so," he said. "The past." He understood everything now. "You came to ask me to return them?" "I have been, you must admit, very considerate, not to have claimed them--before!" "You have been--generous!" answered Lissac, with a gracious smile. He opened his secretaire, one of the drawers of which contained little packages folded and tied with bands of silk ribbon, that slept the sleep of forgotten things. "There are your letters, my dear Marianne! But you have nothing to fear; they have never left this spot." The eyes of the young woman sparkled with a joyous light. Slowly as if afraid that Guy would not give them to her, she extended her bare arm toward the packet of letters and snatched it suddenly. "My letters!" "It is an entire romance," said Lissac. "Less the epilogue!" she said, still enveloping him with her intense look. She placed the packet on the velvet-covered mantelpiece and hastily finished dressing. Then taking between her fingers those little letters in their old-fashioned envelopes bearing her monogram, and that still bore traces of a woman's perfume, she looked at them for a moment and said to Lissac: "You have read them occasionally?" "I know them by heart!"