ing. Pierre has had the clever
idea (there was really no roguishness in it) to bring all his
photographs, from the age of three; there was one that showed him in a
little skirt. Luce laughed with pleasure; she spoke to the photo in
comical baby talk. Can there be anything more delightful to a woman than
to see the picture of the person she loves when he was quite small? She
cradles, she rocks him in her thoughts, she gives him the breast; and
she is even not so far from the dream that she has given him birth. And
besides (nor does she dupe herself at all) it forms a convenient pretext
to say to the infant what she cannot force herself to say to the
grown-up.--When he asks which one of the photographs she prefers, she
says without hesitating:

"The dear little codger...."

How serious he looks, already! Almost more serious than today. Certainly
if Luce dared to look (and just here she does dare) in order to make
comparisons with the Pierre of today, she would see in his eyes an
expression of joy and infantile gayety that does not appear in the
infant: for the eyes of this infant, this little _bourgeois_ under a
bell glass, are birds in a cage that lack sunlight; and the sunlight has
come, hasn't it, Luce?...

In his turn he asks to see photos of Luce. She exhibits a little girl of
six with a big plait who is squeezing a little dog in her arms; and as
she sees it again she thinks mischievously that in that period she loved
no less fervently nor very differently; whatever heart she possessed she
gave it even then to her dog; it was Pierre already, while waiting till
he arrived. Also she showed a young miss of thirteen or fourteen who
twisted her neck with a coquettish and a somewhat pretentious air;
luckily there was always there at the corners of the mouth that roguish
little smile which appeared to say:

"You know, I'm just amusing myself; I don't taken myself seriously."

Now they had completely forgotten their former embarrassment.

She set herself to sketching-in the portrait. Since he must not budge
one bit any more, nor talk except with the tips of his lips, she it was
who made almost all the conversation, all by herself. Instinct told her
that silence was dangerous. And as it happens with sincere persons who
talk at some length, she came quickly to the point of confiding to him
the intimate affairs of her life and those of her family which she did
not have the slightest intention of recounting. She heard hers