And _there_ go my youth and beauty--Marthe! Then, I---- ?" In anguish she goes on, "I'm not old yet, since I'm only thirty-five, but I've aged very quickly; I've some white hairs that you can see, close to; I'm wrinkled and my eyes have sunk.

I'm here, in life, to live, to occupy my time; but I'm nothing more than I am! Of course, I'm still alive, but the future comes to an end before life does.

Ah, it's really only youth that has a place in life.

All young faces are alike and go from one to the other without ever being deceived.

They wipe out and destroy all the rest, and they make the others see themselves as they are, so that they become useless." She is right! When the young woman stands up she takes, in fact, the other's place in the ideal and in the human heart, and makes of the other a returning ghost.