"I love him as on the day he died; as on that other day, that dreadful day when he left me--I cannot cry all this upon the housetops. You, madame, have suffered like me, more even than me, the pain of this horrible war; we can no longer speak of our dead! We have no right to show our grief! There are too many griefs, too many dead. I have never been able to talk about him; I have found only one person who would consent to recall him with kindliness, and she is a Parisian, a self-centred woman who has managed not to permit herself to be touched by the war, a young woman, like me, but already a woman of former days. Who is there, henceforth, who can dwell on her personal sorrow?" "It remains to be seen, my poor dear," said Mme. de Calouas, "whether what you say is an evil. I mean an evil for the time in which we live, during this war which has no end, and during the many years after this war; in a word, during all our lives--even yours. You know, my child, that I am a woman bound to all the old customs. In our family widowhood is a serious thing, and usually a thing for life. But this war has modified even our most firmly established customs. Great necessities, painful new duties, lie before us. We have been obliged to put down, with a strong hand, many of our feelings; we are bound to subordinate our personality and its most sacred traditions to the common weal. To mourn a beloved husband--what is more touching and more worthy in a young woman? But, my little friend, let me confide to you a cruel truth, of which you are already beginning to be aware. You were just saying to me that we can no longer talk about our dead husbands, however gloriously they may have been killed; it is equally the case of both of us. Well, forgive me for what I am going to say--it is one of the most cruel features of this time that has no name--to mourn our husbands is a sort of self-indulgence, it is a personal civility, it is almost a delight! I shall startle you, but I must say it to you, I who am twenty years older than you, because I recognize in you a noble heart, broadened rather than belittled by this storm. My poor child, you have no right to remain surrounded by these likenesses of the dead. If we belonged to ourselves, we would give ourselves up to what our hearts would prefer--weak, human creatures that we are! We would choose to remember and to mourn. But we are no longer our own! Let us imitate our husbands! They would certainly have preferred to live. To assert the contrary is mere boasting. But without hesitating they accepted death. They understood, every one of them, that they were not their own. Nor are we our own. I give you my word of honor--and you can never imagine the object of reverence or the cause of joy that for twenty years my husband was to me--if I were still young enough to have children I would marry again to-morrow! I am too old, and this is why you see me take so much pains in other directions.