“Yes,” he cried, rising from his chair, “there is something else which I do not see clearly.... It is my love that objects.... I don’t want to lift the veil that shrouds Gilberte.... I prefer her so.... She is more mine like this....” He was walking up and down excitedly. Gilberte held out her arms to him. He flung himself on his knees before her: “Gilberte, I beseech you, remain for me the dear unknown whom I loved from the first day that I saw her. I do not know what prompts me to beg this of you, but I want you to give me the intense joy of feeling that you exist only through me, that you are commencing your life with me, that you are heaping still more darkness upon your past so that your eyes may be obliged to turn still more towards the future. Be the unknown lady of the Logis. Be the unknown who mingled her dreams with mine, the dear unknown who came from I know not where, but who came to me, of that I am certain.” She hung on his words. He stammered, incoherently: “Oh, you will do it ... I feel it!... And yet, Gilberte, listen ... the secret is yours ... you yourself have the right to know....” She answered, with a smile that lifted him into the seventh heaven: “Guillaume, I do not want to know what you will not know.... Besides, it matters so little! I was only happy for your mother’s sake.” He bent his head and kissed her hands. Presently, they heard Mme. de la Vaudraye tearing up the letter. She said, simply: “It shall be as you wish, my dear children. But don’t you think, Guillaume, that there will be difficulties, that the law requires ...? “Never mind the difficulties!” he cried. “We shall see to that later. Everything will be settled as we intend, I am sure of it.” A long silence followed, full of grave sweetness. At the end of it, however, Guillaume, smitten with a vague remorse, murmured: “And so, dearest, you will never know your name?” She smiled: “But I know my name: is it not Gilberte de la Vaudraye?” “But your mother?” “Oh, my mother!” she said, with shining eyes. “Mother’s name was mamma!” THE END Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: all this preamable=> all this preamble {pg 64} brillant talker=> brilliant talker {pg 86}