“Look, that might be my garden, on the other side.... Why, so it is!... There’s the Logis.... Where are we?” She walked on. They came to a cluster of small fir-trees. When they had passed them, they were just opposite the ruined summer-house, with only the width of the valley in between. Gilberte gave a start. That spur of the hill, that circle of red rocks surrounding it, that cluster of firs: was this not the spot where the unknown stranger, for months ...? A flood of contradictory feelings welled up within her: feelings of gratitude towards the invisible friend, feelings of confusion towards the actual friend, memories of the dear past and visions of the present. How she wished that she had not come to this place with Guillaume! She felt inclined to exclaim: “Go away! Go away!” But, on turning her head, she was stupefied at the sight of his pallor and the change in his face: “What’s the matter? Why don’t you say something? Speak to me!” She broke off. A sudden thought struck her, an improbable, but madly delightful idea. She fixed her eyes on his, looked down into his very soul; and the truth appeared to her so clearly that, leaning against the side of the rock, she gasped: “It was you all the time!... It was you!...” Not for a moment did the shadow of a fear that she was mistaken, cross her. Holding her head between her hands and closing her eyes, she took refuge in her happiness as in an inaccessible dwelling from which not even he could have driven her. He was speaking now, kneeling before her; and it seemed to Gilberte as though two voices were joined in that one voice of entreaty, as though the unknown friend were joining his prayer to Guillaume’s, blending his image with Guillaume’s, mingling with him and beseeching her with the same hands, adoring her with the same heart: “Gilberte, it was the day on which you arrived at Domfront, You were in the public gardens, near the ruins, and I saw you raise your mourning-veil. Since that day, my life has been wrapped up in yours. When you went over the Logis with my mother, I was there, hiding behind a curtain. You stopped close by me, I was able to take you in my eyes, to lock you in my breast like a treasure; I heard your voice, I breathed your fragrance and I lived on that memory for weeks, seeking you, calling you, hovering round the Logis, hoping for a chance meeting. Oh, the delight of it when I saw you from here, one afternoon, and when you came back next day and every day, every day! I was not sure, but it appeared to me that you saw me ... and then ... that it was just a little because of me that you came back.” “I saw you, yes, I saw you,” said Gilberte, without removing her clasped hands from her face. He asked: “Are you crying?” “I am so happy!” “Happy?” “Yes, happy because it was you.” “Gilberte,” he begged, “I would give worlds to see your tears.” She showed her dear face all wet with tears, all smiling with tears. He whispered: “I love you.”