Always there was the same gaiety in her, the same emotion in me.
At last a fortnight passed without my meeting her.

I met Gaston and asked after her.
"Poor girl, she is very ill," he answered.
"What is the matter ?" "She is consumptive, and the sort of life she leads isn't exactly the thing to cure her.

She has taken to her bed; she is dying." The heart is a strange thing; I was almost glad at hearing it.
Every day I went to ask after her, without leaving my name or my card.

I heard she was convalescent and had gone to Bagneres.
Time went by, the impression, if not the memory, faded gradually from my mind.

I travelled; love affairs, habits, work, took the place of other thoughts, and when I recalled this adventure I looked upon it as one of those passions which one has when one is very young, and laughs at soon afterward.
For the rest, it was no credit to me to have got the better of this recollection, for I had completely lost sight of Marguerite, and, as I told you, when she passed me in the corridor of the Varietes, I did not recognise her.