It was not a resurrection of the old love; that would have been impossible....

But his remorse made him see her, idealized by distance, with all her qualities of a sweet and modest woman.
He wished to reestablish the cordial relations of other times, to have all the past pardoned, so that she would no longer look at him with hatred, believing him responsible for the death of her son.
In reality she was the only woman who had loved him sincerely, as she was able to love, without violence or passional exaggeration, and with the tranquillity of a comrade.

The other women no longer existed.

They were a troop of shadows that passed through his memory like specters of visible shape but without color.

As for that last one, that Freya whom bad luck had put in his way--...