After I had wandered about long enough to refresh my mind, I realized I was now getting a little bored and that it was time to go to the last resting place of my old love and pay her my ever-faithful respects. By the time I reached her graveside I was feeling quite upset. Poor darling, she was so sweet, so loving, so fair and rosy … and now … if this spot were ever opened up … Leaning on the iron railings I whispered to her a few sad words which I dare say she is unlikely to have heard. I was just about to leave when I saw a woman in deep mourning on her knees at the next graveside. She had lifted her crêpe veil and under it could be seen a pretty head of fair hair, a crown of bright dawn under the dark night of her head-dress. I lingered. In what was obviously deep distress she had buried her face in her hands and, stiff as a statue, was deep in meditation. Absorbed by her grief and telling the painful beads of memory behind closed and hidden eyes, she seemed herself dead to the world in her loss. Suddenly I saw that she was about to break down. I could tell from the slight movement her back made, like a willow stirring in the wind. She wept gently at first then more and more violently with her neck and shoulders shaking hard and rapidly. All of a sudden she uncovered her eyes. Full of tears they were lovely. She looked wildly about her as if waking from a nightmare. She saw me looking at her, seemed ashamed and buried her whole face once more in her hands. Then she burst into convulsive sobs and her head bent slowly down towards the marble slab. She rested her forehead on it and her veil, spreading about her, covered the white corners of her beloved sepulchre like a new mourning-cloth. I heard her moan before she collapsed with her cheek against the tombstone and lay there motionless and unconscious.

I rushed over to her, slapped her hands and breathed on her eyelids while reading the simple epitaph beyond:

HERE LIES LOUIS-THEODORE CARREL

Captain of Marines
Killed by the enemy at Tonkin

PRAY FOR HIS SOUL

The date of death was some months earlier. I was moved to tears and redoubled my efforts to revive her. Finally they succeeded and she came to. I’m not bad-looking, not yet forty, remember, and at that moment I must have been looking extremely solicitous. At any rate, from her first glance I realized she would be both polite and grateful to me. I was not disappointed. Between further tears and sobs she told me about the officer who had been killed at Tonkin9 after they had been married for just one year. He had married her for love. She had been an orphan and possessed nothing but the smallest dowry.