ove her door would be closed to me. Upon my return I found her thin and
changed. Her habitual smile seemed to languish on her discolored lips.
She told me that she had been suffering. We did not speak of the past.
She did not appear to wish to recall it, and I had no desire to refer to
it. We resumed our old relations of neighbors; yet there was something
of constraint between us, a sort of conventional familiarity. It was
as if we had agreed: "It was thus before, let it still be thus." She
granted me her confidence, a concession that was not without its charms
for me; but our conversation was colder, for the reason that our eyes
expressed as much as our tongues. In all that we said there was more to
be surmised than was actually spoken. We no longer endeavored to fathom
each other's minds; there was not the same interest attaching to each
word, to each sentiment; that curious analysis that characterized our
past intercourse; she treated me with kindness, but I distrusted
even that kindness; I walked with her in the garden, but no longer
accompanied her outside of the premises; we no longer wandered through
the woods and valleys; she opened the piano when we were alone; the
sound of her voice no longer awakened in my heart those transports of
joy which are like sobs that are inspired by hope. When I took leave of
her, she gave me her hand, but I was conscious of the fact that it was
lifeless; there was much effort in our familiar ease, many reflections
in our lightest remarks, much sadness at the bottom of it all. We felt
that there was a third party between us: it was my love for her.
My actions never betrayed it, but it appeared in my face. I lost my
cheerfulness, my energy, and the color of health that once shone in my
cheeks. At the end of one month I no longer resembled my old self. And
yet in all our conversations I insisted on my disgust with the world, on
my aversion to returning to it. I tried to make Madame Pierson feel
that she had no reason to reproach herself for allowing me to see her;
I depicted my past life in the most sombre colors, and gave her to
understand that if she should refuse to allow me to see her, she would
condemn me to a loneliness worse than death. I told her that I held
society in abhorrence and the story of my life, as I recited it, proved
my sincerity. So I affected a cheerfulness that I was far from feeling,
in order to show her that in permitting me to see her, she had saved me
from the