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nice? Though I should miss the Christmas-tree here; any-
how, if I do stay in Paris, I sha’n’t be coming here, because I
shall be out paying calls with Mamma. Good-bye—there’s
Papa calling me.’
I returned home with Françoise through streets that
were still gay with sunshine, as on the evening of a holiday
when the merriment is over. I could scarcely drag my legs
along.
‘I’m not surprised;’ said Françoise, ‘it’s not the right
weather for the time of year; it’s much too warm. Oh dear,
oh dear, to think of all the poor sick people there must be
everywhere; you would think that up there, too, every-
thing’s got out of order.’
I repeated to myself, stifling my sobs, the words in which
Gilberte had given utterance to her joy at the prospect of not
coming back, for a long time, to the Champs-Elysées. But
already the charm with which, by the mere act of thinking,
my mind was filled as soon as it thought of her, the privi-
leged position, unique even if it were painful, in which I was
inevitably placed in relation to Gilberte by the contraction
of a scar in my mind, had begun to add to that very mark
of her indifference something romantic, and in the midst of
my tears my lips would shape themselves in a smile which
was indeed the timid outline of a kiss. And when the time
came for the postman I said to myself, that evening as on
every other: ‘I am going to have a letter from Gilberte, she
is going to tell me, at last, that she has never ceased to love
me, and to explain to me the mysterious reason by which
she has been forced to conceal her love from me until now,

630 Swann’s Way