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ing itself to the same new degree of intimacy as her speech,
fell on me also more directly, not without testifying to the
consciousness, the pleasure, even the gratitude that it felt,
accompanying itself with a smile.
But at that actual moment, I was not able to appreciate
the worth of these new pleasures. They were given, not by
the little girl whom I loved, to me who loved her, but by the
other, her with whom I used to play, to my other self, who
possessed neither the memory of the true Gilberte, nor the
fixed heart which alone could have known the value of a
happiness for which it alone had longed. Even after I had
returned home I did not taste them, since, every day, the
necessity which made me hope that on the morrow I should
arrive at the clear, calm, happy contemplation of Gilberte,
that she would at last confess her love for me, explaining to
me the reasons by which she had been obliged, hitherto, to
conceal it, that same necessity forced me to regard the past
as of no account, to look ahead of me only, to consider the
little advantages that she had given me not in themselves
and as if they were self-sufficient, but like fresh rungs of the
ladder on which I might set my feet, which were going to
allow me to advance a step further and finally to attain the
happiness which I had not yet encountered.
If, at times, she shewed me these marks of her affection,
she troubled me also by seeming not to be pleased to see
me, and this happened often on the very days on which I
had most counted for the realisation of my hopes. I was
sure that Gilberte was coming to the Champs-Elysées, and
I felt an elation which seemed merely the anticipation of

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