Thérèse had then gone out into the garden to Anne, whose last year’s dresses had already grown too loose for her. “Well?” cried the girl, as soon as her friend came up. The ashes on the garden paths, the dry harsh grass of the lawns, the smell of the parched geraniums, and Anne herself more wasted than any plant on that August afternoon,--Thérèse could recall every detail of the scene. Sometimes stormy showers forced them to take refuge in the hot-house, while the hailstones rattled on the glass roof. “Why do you mind going away, since you don’t see him?” “I don’t see him, but I know he is living and breathing four miles away. When the wind is in the east, I know he hears the church bell at the same time as I do. Would you not care whether Bernard was at Argelouse or Paris? I don’t see Jean, but I know he’s not far off. On Sunday, at Mass, I do not even try to turn my head, because we can only see the altar from where we sit, and we are shut off from the congregation by a pillar. But as we go out....” “Wasn’t he there on Sunday?” Thérèse knew it; she knew that as Anne was being led away by her mother she had searched in vain among the crowd for a face that was not there. “Perhaps he was ill.... They stop his letters. I’m not allowed to know anything.” “Still, it’s strange he can’t find some means of getting a word to you.” “If you only would, Thérèse.... Yes, I know your position is delicate....” “Agree to go away, and then, perhaps....” “I can’t go away from him.” “But he’ll go away in any case, darling. He’ll be leaving Argelouse in a few weeks.” “Oh, don’t, don’t. It’s too dreadful. And not a word from him to help me to live. I can’t bear it much longer: every moment I can’t help remembering the words of his that made me happiest: but I have said them over to myself so often, I’ve begun to be not quite sure whether he really did say them. Why, I can still hear his voice as he said to me, when we last met: ‘There is no one in my life but you....’ That is what he said,--or it may have been:--‘You are what is dearest to me in life.’ I can’t remember exactly.” And with knitted brows she tried to recall the echo of those consoling words whose meaning seemed to her so overwhelming. “Well, tell me what the young man is like.” “You can’t imagine.” “Is he so unlike the others?” “I should like to describe him ... but he is so much beyond anything I could say.... After all, you might think him quite ordinary.... But I’m sure you wouldn’t.” She could no longer see any individual traits in the youth whose image glowed with all the love she bore him. “Passion,” thought Thérèse, “would make me more clear-sighted: nothing would escape me in the human being I wanted for my own.”