"Well, after Anne de Sézery's departure, I asked Elizabeth her impression. I had told her that morning that Mlle. de Sézery, completely crushed by fate, had remolded her life. "'Yes, I know she has been pretty,' she answered. 'But now she has too little hair and too big a mouth.' "I had not noticed it. But I knew her eyes, her face, her figure. Why so much injustice? I was not seeking a detailed description. When everything has been made easy for us, when we have exerted neither effort nor will-power, why show ourselves to be so miserably contemptuous? There are words so unkind that they become fixed in our memory like milestones and serve to measure the distance which separates us from those who have uttered them." "June 25th: I made no attempt after this setback to invite Anne de Sézery to my house again. We are near neighbors: I am going to call on her in the Rue Cassini. It is a little deserted street, hidden by the trees on the Avenue de l'Observatoire. No one goes through it, and one might think oneself very far from Paris. We are both going away--she to London, where she must discontinue her former life, and I to the country. Each visit should have been the last. But day by day our departure was deferred. In the evening after my work I meet her returning from her walk, and we both find relaxation in a few minutes' conversation. "'In England,' she had said almost at the beginning of this new friendship, 'I could see you frequently without any difficulty. Here, I do not know ...' "'But since we are going away?' "With no relatives, she was lost in Paris, as I was in my unhappy home life." "June 27th: Little Marie Louise asked me why I no longer take her out walking in the evening." "June 29th: Visited the Carnavalet Museum with Anne de Sézery. The story of the Revolution is an endless source of pathos which one can never exhaust. "We have agreed that next winter I shall show her an unknown Paris, the Paris which bears traces of the long centuries and of great men. With her, interchange of thought is unlimited. There is always a little embarrassment when I arrive; the first subject of conversation dispels it. She assures me that I make her live an intellectual life such as one does not know in London." "June 30th: The farewell. "'You will marry in England.' "'I think not.' "'However, you will marry.' "'I am thirty. I am afraid I shall be unable to make up my mind. When I was quite young I expected so much life and love.' "'And now?' "'Now I demand more.' "'Would you not come to Dauphiné?' "'To what purpose? Go to Saint Ismier for me some day. You will tell me when you return if the château has not been repaired, if the trees in the park have not been pruned or cut down, if my country of former days is not made unrecognizable. I hope it is not.'