when they were parting, he said:
“May I call on you to say goodbye?”
And she gently replied: “No, my friend, I’m somewhat busy; I think we should leave things as they are.”

She waited for a word; he did not utter it, and she said:
“Goodbye.”
Then she waited for a letter, in vain. So she wrote him that it was preferable for her to be frank, that she may have led him to believe she liked him, that this was not the case, that she would rather not see him as often as she had requested with imprudent friendliness.

He replied that he had never really believed in anything more than her friendship, for which she was famous, and which he had never meant to abuse to the point of coming so often and bothering her.

Then she wrote him that she loved him, that she would never love anyone but him. He replied that she must be joking.

She stopped writing to him, but not, at first, thinking about him. Then that also stopped. Two years later, weighed down by her widowhood, she married the Duke de Mortagne, who was handsome and witty and who, until Madeleine’s death—for over forty years, that is—filled her life with a glory and affection that she never failed to appreciate.

The end