Bent and weary, her heart obsessed by memories, Madame Guibert left it to Paule to accompany the Captain to the gate. She watched them disappear, thinking tenderly of what might be. She commended Paule’s future to God and went back to ponder in solitude over the sorrowful story she had heard. Paule and Jean had said good-bye at the end of the avenue. The young man paused to follow the tall, graceful figure gliding through the trees. At the same moment the girl, too, turned round. She blushed at the coincidence and bravely came back that no awkwardness might remain. “Jean,” she murmured with emotion, “I have never thanked you enough for my brother, who was a little yours too, nor for my mother, to whom your letters and your visit have done so much good. You have been good to us. I could not tell you before, so I came back.” The emotion which stirred her made her more tender, more human. “Oh, no,” said the young man. “Do not thank me. Was I not Marcel’s friend?--and our fathers loved each other.” They stood face to face, not finding words. They felt a certain shyness, which they wished by turns to banish and to prolong. Jean could see against Paule’s cheek the long lashes shading the downcast eyes. “Listen,” he said at last. “In Marcel’s tunic there was something beside your mother’s last letter--This photograph was found too. I thought I would give it back to you--yourself.” He gave her a faded photograph, in which she recognised a path in the garden of Le Maupas and on it two little girls of ten or twelve--one fair, the other dark; one sitting quiet, gazing with eyes astonished at the world, the other caught in a lively pose. They were Alice and herself. “Oh!” she said. And in a dull voice she asked: “Did he never speak of her to you?” “No, never.” She let the picture fall dully on the gravel of the path. Unable to contain herself any longer, she wept helplessly. Jean took her hand. “I often thought,” said he, “out there in Africa, how stupid fate was. Why did I not die in his place? Nobody would have wept for me.” What could she answer? Her dark eyes shone with a sudden light. She picked up the photograph before he had time to bend down. “Thank you, Jean. Come and see us again soon. It would be a charity.” He looked at her a moment and then departed. She went back slowly through the garden. Her eyes wandered over the flowers. She picked a rose and for the first time in the year felt a little joy at its scent. She thought of her brother’s death in an unexpected way and repeated Jean’s words, of whose lesson she felt the full force: “We must honor the dead but we must also have faith in life.”