I have before me as I write a little picture of the Annunciation. Mary, who is scarcely fifteen years old, has just learned from the angel her divine mission. With clasped hands she strives to quiet her heart. In spite of her unworthiness, she accepts the honour at which she thrills, but at the same time she foresees all the sorrow that will come to her. She trembles with joy or fear, or rather with joy and fear together. In the course of a journey to Italy I came upon the picture in a little town. To secure it I needed more than money; I had to use persistence, strategy, eloquence. But I wanted it at any price. For this acceptance without fear--oh, in my comparison I do not intend any irreverence, which as far as I am concerned would only be detestable and ridiculous--this acceptance without fear recalled to me my betrothal, which in truth was for Raymonde an oblation that she made to me of all the suffering to come. With mystic intuition she foresaw it, but I, I guessed nothing. She had listened to me without speaking. At last, as though there were any need of words when I saw that the whole current of her being was arrested, I demanded: “Will you not tell me, too, that you love me?” She shivered all over and I dared insist. “Not to-day,” she murmured at length in a colourless voice. “I cannot.” “And to-morrow?” “To-morrow perhaps.” Fool that I was, I could obtain nothing more from her, though she was sinking under the weight of her love. Ordinarily we employ the same phrases in common conversation that we use for the deepest emotions. Through reluctance, through delay, through the difficulty of giving them utterance, the desire to keep them in her heart, which cherished them in order the better to absorb their virtue, Raymonde restored to the divine words their true meaning, their power and their freshness. And I complained! I wished to embrace her, but despite myself my respect for her checked me, and instead I bent over the hand that hung by her side. She had to restrain herself from drawing it away, as if my kiss had burned it. “Leave her now,” said her father. “You do not see that she is thoroughly tired out.” Ah, how I pity those who become engaged, who marry, in the city! Does not everything urge them to set bounds to a love which they must keep, as it were, on a leash, in the streets, must protect incessantly in the midst of acquaintances, difficulties and embarrassments? My own and Raymonde’s love blossomed forth in freedom. We had resumed our horseback rides, and sometimes M. Mairieux accompanied us, sometimes he entrusted his daughter to me, when he would follow us with his eyes for several moments before he returned to his office or his work outdoors.