He believed from what he had heard that she was destined to remain infirm, condemned never to become a woman, stricken even in her sex.

The doctors, who failed to agree respecting her case, had abandoned her.

Doubtless it was she who told him these things that dreary afternoon, whilst the yellow withered leaves rained upon them.
However, he could not remember the words that they had spoken; her pale smile, her young face, still so charming though already dimmed by regretfulness for life, alone remained present with him.

But he realised that she had evoked the far-off day of their parting, on that same spot, behind the hedge flecked with sunlight; and all that was already as though dead--their tears, their embrace, their promise to find one another some day with a certainty of happiness.

For although they had found one another again, what availed it, since she was but a corpse, and he was about to bid farewell to the life of the world?
As the doctors condemned her, as she would never be woman, nor wife, nor mother, he, on his side, might well renounce manhood, and annihilate himself, dedicate himself to God, to whom his mother gave him.