t
before him, in a sort of moral stupor and physical prostration which
left him only just strength enough to put one foot before the other.
Then he went home to reflect.

He loved this little girl, then. He comprehended now all that he had
felt near her since that walk in the Parc Monceau, when he found in her
mouth the call from a voice hardly recognized, the voice that long ago
had awakened his heart; then all that slow, irresistible renewal of
a love not yet extinct, not yet frozen, which he persisted in not
acknowledging to himself.

What should he do? But what could he do? When she was married he would
avoid seeing her often, that was all. Meantime, he would continue to
return to the house, so that no one should suspect anything, and he
would hide his secret from everyone.

He dined at home, which he very seldom did. Then he had a fire made in
the large stove in his studio, for the night promised to be very cold.
He even ordered the chandeliers to be lighted, as if he disliked
the dark corners, and then he shut himself in. What strange emotion,
profound, physical, frightfully sad, had seized him! He felt it in his
throat, in his breast, in all his relaxed muscles as well as in his
fainting soul. The walls of the apartment oppressed him; all his life
was inclosed therein--his life as an artist, his life as a man. Every
painted study hanging there recalled a success, each piece of furniture
spoke of some memory. But successes and memories were things of the
past. His life? How short, how empty it seemed to him, yet full. He had
made pictures, and more pictures, and always pictures, and had loved one
woman. He recalled the evenings of exaltation, after their meetings, in
this same studio. He had walked whole nights with his being on fire with
fever. The joy of happy love, the joy of worldly success, the unique
intoxication of glory, had caused him to taste unforgettable hours of
inward triumph.

He had loved a woman, and that woman had loved him. Through her he
had received that baptism which reveals to man the mysterious world of
emotions and of love. She had opened his heart almost by force, and now
he could no longer close it. Another love had entered, in spite of him,
through this opening--another, or rather the same relighted by a new
face; the same, stronger by all the force which this need to adore takes
on in old age. So he loved this little girl! He need no longer struggle,
resist, or deny; he loved her