Sylvie then went through several bars of an air from a modern opera, phrasing them as she sang.

We walked past the pools and soon came upon the smooth green lawn edged by elms and lindens where we had danced so often. My conceit led me to mark out the old Carlovingian walls for her and to decipher the coat of arms of the House of Este.

‘And you talk to me of reading! See how much more you have read than I. You’re quite a scholar.’ Her tone of reproach was irritating just when I had been waiting for a favourable moment to renew my entreaties of the morning. But what could I say to her, accompanied by a donkey and a very wide-awake little boy who never left us for a second, in order not to miss hearing a Parisian talk? And then I was stupid enough to tell her of that unforgettable appearance of Adrienne at Chaâlis long ago; we even went into the very room in the château where I had heard her sing.

‘If I could only hear your voice here beneath these arches, Sylvie, it would drive away the spirit that torments me, be it divine or the old bewitchment.’

Then she repeated after me:

‘What a gloomy song!’

‘To me it’s sublime; it is probably by Porpora, and I think the words were translated in the sixteenth century.’

‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ said Sylvie.

We came back through the valley, taking the Charlepont road which the peasants, naturally unversed in etymology, insist upon calling Châllepont. Sylvie, weary of the donkey, was walking beside me, leaning upon my arm. The road was deserted and I tried to speak the words that were in my mind, but somehow nothing but the most vulgar expressions occurred to me, or perhaps a pompous phrase from a novel that Sylvie might have read. Then, as we approached the walls of Saint S—, I surprised her with something quite classic, and fell silent for we were crossing water meadows and our path had to be carefully chosen among the interlacing streams.

‘What’s become of the nun?’ I said suddenly.

‘How tiresome you are with your nun!…Well, that affair hasn’t turned out very well.’ And this was all Sylvie would say about it.

I wonder whether women know when men are not speaking their true feelings? So often are they deceived, that it seems hardly possible, and many men act the comedy of love so cleverly! Though there are women who submit knowingly to deception, I could never bring myself to practise it, and besides, there is something sacred about a love that goes back to one’s childhood. Sylvie and I had grown up together, almost as brother and sister, and to attempt to seduce her was unthinkable. Quite a different thought rose up in my mind!

Were I in Paris at this moment, I said to myself, I would be at the theatre. What will Aurelia (that was the actress’s name) be playing in to-night? Surely the princess in the new drama, and how pathetic she is in the third act! And the love scene in the second, with that wizened old fellow who plays the hero.…

‘What are you meditating?’ asked Sylvie, and then she began to sing:

‘Ah, that’s not fair,’ I cried, ‘you know plenty of those old songs!’