Her voice, as she spoke, had a low, soft sound, a sort of inexplicable something which came from the very depths of her soul.

She never had looked at me with that glance or spoken to me in that tone before.

Upon that day I knew that she loved me.
"I returned to my home unutterably happy, for I loved this woman with a love of which I believed myself incapable.
"When I met Madame de Bergenheim again, I found her completely changed toward me; an icy gravity, an impassible calm, an ironical and disdainful haughtiness had taken the place of the delicious abandon of her former bearing.

In spite of my strong determination to allow myself to love with the utmost candor, it was impossible for me to return to that happy age when the frowning brows of the beautiful idol to whom we paid court inspired us with the resolve to drown ourselves.

I could not isolate myself from my past experiences.