ierre."

They were holding hands; and without looking at one another, their eyes
fixed upon the tender blue of the sky between the branches of the
leafless trees, they kept silence. The flood of their thoughts
intermingled by way of their hands.

She said:

"The other night both of us were afraid."

"Yes," said he, "how good it was."

(Only later they smiled at having expressed, each one, what the other
was dreaming of.)

She tore her hand away and suddenly sprang up, having heard the clock
strike.

"Oh, I have scarcely more than time left...."

Together they marched at that little quick-step the Parisian women take
so prettily, so that seeing them trot, one scarcely thinks of their
swiftness, so easy appears the gait.

"Do you pass here often?"

"Every day. But oftener on the other side of the terrace." (She pointed
to the garden with its Watteau trees.) "I am just back from the Museum."

(He looked at the portfolio she carried.)

"Painter?" he asked.

"No," she replied, "that's too big a word. A little dauberette."

"Why? For your own pleasure?"

"Oh, no indeed! For money."

"For money?"

"It's horrid, isn't it? to make art for money?"

"It's particularly astonishing to make money if one cannot paint."

"It's just for that reason, you see. I'll explain it to you another
time."

"Another time, by the fountain, we'll have lunch again."

"We shall see. If it's good weather."

"But you will come earlier? Will you not? Say yes ... Luce...."

(They were come to the station. She jumped on the running board of the
tram car.)

"Answer, say yes, little light!..."

She did not answer; but when the tram was in motion she made a "yes"
with her eyelids and he read on her lips without her having spoken:

"Yes, Pierre."

Both of them thought, as they went their way:

"It's amazing, this evening, what a happy look everybody has!"

And they kept smiling without taking heed of what had occurred. They
knew only that they had _it_, that they possessed _it_ and that _it
belonged_ to them. It? What? Nothing. We feel rich this evening!... On
getting home they looked at themselves carefully in the mirror just as
one looks at a friend, with loving eyes. They said to themselves: "That
gaze of his, of hers, was fixed on _you_." They went to bed early,
overcome--but wherefore?--by a delicious weariness. While they undressed
they kept thinking:

"What's best of all at present is, that there's a tomorrow."