She freed herself from his embrace, and as if she had an hallucination, held out her hand to indicate to him something or someone whom he did not see. "There, there! She is there! Look! Between us!" "Who?" "She is always there--when you read to me in the evening, when you tell me that you love me, when you take me out walking. Just now you wanted to show me those ruins, to exchange our impressions. She does not wish it. She has come." "But who?" he repeated, although he already knew. "Anne de Sézery." At the sound of her name which neither one nor the other had ever dared to utter, the distant girl with the golden eyes appeared actually to rise under the trees, there, near the cloister arch. Albert resolutely put away the phantom. "Listen, Elizabeth," he said. "Nothing is between us, not even she. She has gone forever. Let us leave her. You are the wife of my youth. You have cared for our home alone so long. Do not destroy it, in your turn, for a shadow. I used to love your unawakened mind. When I believed it was so, I looked elsewhere for that happiness which we do not appreciate when it is within our grasp, and which requires such constant devotion, an almost daily watchfulness, to be realized and retained. Now I find it in you. I was not mistaken when I chose you. You are certainly the one who was to determine my life, my entire life. I love you and I beg you to forget." She had listened to him, trembling, bending towards him, like those slender birches in the forest which rear themselves to reach the light. The last word aroused her again. "But you, Albert, you. How could you forget her?" "Near her, Elizabeth, I thought of you. Near you I do not think of her." And with a curious persistence, she said: "No, you cannot forget her. And I, I do not want to owe my happiness to her sacrifice. I have tried ever since your return. I cannot." Surprised and dismayed by this mysterious allusion, he asked her: "Her sacrifice? What sacrifice? I don't understand." "That is quite right. You cannot understand." And in the same frightened and compelling voice, she added this vague warning: "You will understand to-night. You will choose to-night." She would give him no other explanation. They had to go back to the forest house. They took the children and returned to Saint-Martin d'Uriage. The return was as dreary as the journey there had been gay. The children instinctively shared the sadness of their parents, who did not exchange a word. They guessed that they were again at variance. And Marie Louise, at a turn in the road, even went up to her father to ask him: "Papa, you are not going away again?"