"I do not come seeking to console you, my friend. If I am making a mistake, turn me to the door. In my mind there is no consolation for you; you are an unfortunate woman. You must not ask much of life, do you see? You have known happiness. To most people happiness is unknown. Let those to whom it is a stranger deceive themselves with words and attitudes; as for you, weep for all you have lost; weep; what you have lost is worth all tears." "Thank you, my friend; do not feel that you are obliged to make a heroine of me, you of all others! You know, of all others, that I am not a heroic soul, but simply a woman who loves." "You are the purest woman whom I have known, in the sense that you are the most natural. You were born in a terrestrial paradise, and until now you have lived in one. You have not been put outside the gate for some misdeed by the angel with the fiery sword; a hurricane has arisen and devastated the garden." "But I am none the less outside of the gate!" "I recognize that. There would be no use in seeking to deny it, and it is all in vain to say to you that if others are less vividly aware of being outside the gate it is because they never lived in the garden, like you." "But they tell me that everything is changed." "They are right, and you see it clearly because you are outside of Eden, which you had never left before. It is only that some of them accept the change quickly because they were prepared for it, and others because they are less sensitive than you." "Then, if such a change exists, does that mean that I should cease to mourn my husband?" "No; but the day will come when you will mourn him more. Remember what I say: you will mourn him more. That is the way in which you will take your part in the change." "More!" ejaculated Odette. "Is it possible? I do not understand you." "I mean by 'more' another manner of mourning, which you will doubtless find more endurable. Let us not talk more about it now, but keep in mind what I have said." She shrank more and more from society, till she could endure neither news nor the face of a friend. She caused herself to be denied at the door--forbade her maid to speak to her of the war, even to bring in the newspapers. She wished to hear nothing. Then Paris became odious to her because she could not keep herself sufficiently in retirement. Since she was not permitted to go and stretch herself upon Jean's tomb, like a faithful dog, she decided to seek a refuge where she could think only of Jean, weep for him in solitude, live only in his memory, stun herself with her own grief, give herself body and soul to this grief from which no earthly power had the right to tear her.