She leant nearer to him to reach his lips, and in his eyes she caught a distant look that frightened her. The something that had been separating them all day, all this last day of their year of tenderness, showed there now with more distinctness than ever. She said at last something that prudence should have counselled her to leave unsaid: “Maurice, where is Chambéry?” “Down there.” His reply came so quickly, and with a gesture so certain, that she was all upset by it. He took his bearings often, then, from that quarter of the sky. Even in his love he had forgotten nothing. Tears started in the young woman’s eyes. He did not ask her the reason of them, but tried to console her with caresses. “Edith, I love you so.” She made a little face to show that she was not deceived. “More than everything?” “More than everything.” “Enough to die for me?” “Yes.” “Not more than that?” “It would not be possible.” With insatiable ardour she cried out: “But I don’t want to die, I want to live. Shall you love me as much to-morrow?” “Why not to-morrow?” “Because I’m afraid. Don’t you see that we can’t go on like this?” “Oh, you see it, too, then. No, we can’t any more. The future, the past, the world, we can’t suppress them. Each day you have been putting off the final reckoning.” “Keep still, Maurice--keep still.” She put her hand against his mouth to stop him, and for a second time she begged him: “To-morrow, to-morrow, I promise you. I’ll do as you wish to-morrow. You shall decide our fate. But not this evening. This last evening is mine.” And she put her lips to his, where her hand had been. The day was waning swiftly. Among the trees the red streak that edged the mountain grew softer, and the waters of the lake took on a uniform tint of grey, barely streaked and lightened here and there by the last reflections from the setting sun. It was he who first moved down the steps of the peristyle. He walked, unheeding what he did, in the direction that he had just pointed out to her with his hand. When he turned back again he saw his companion motionless there between two columns. So she had waited for him that other time before the Calvary of Lemenc. Her white figure stood out against the greyer wall. “How beautiful she is,” he reflected, defeated a second time. She was smelling of her flowers, watching the evening light, and he recalled their queer visit of the afternoon: “Love and his roses.” He called to her: “Edith, aren’t you coming? It’s getting chilly, and you have no wrap.” As she came over toward him he gazed still toward that point in the horizon that marked his native land for him, and thought: “The ruin is down there.” Had not the artist in Orta assured them, with his engaging smile, that Love took delight in ruins? II THE ANNIVERSARY