even the gratitude that it felt, accompanying itself with a smile.

But at that actual moment, I was not able to appreciate the worth of
these new pleasures. They were given, not by the little girl whom I
loved, to me who loved her, but by the other, her with whom I used to
play, to my other self, who possessed neither the memory of the true
Gilberte, nor the fixed heart which alone could have known the value
of a happiness for which it alone had longed. Even after I had returned
home I did not taste them, since, every day, the necessity which made
me hope that on the morrow I should arrive at the clear, calm, happy
contemplation of Gilberte, that she would at last confess her love
for me, explaining to me the reasons by which she had been obliged,
hitherto, to conceal it, that same necessity forced me to regard the
past as of no account, to look ahead of me only, to consider the little
advantages that she had given me not in themselves and as if they were
self-sufficient, but like fresh rungs of the ladder on which I might
set my feet, which were going to allow me to advance a step further and
finally to attain the happiness which I had not yet encountered.

If, at times, she shewed me these marks of her affection, she troubled
me also by seeming not to be pleased to see me, and this happened often
on the very days on which I had most counted for the realisation of my
hopes. I was sure that Gilberte was coming to the Champs-Elysees, and
I felt an elation which seemed merely the anticipation of a great
happiness when--going into the drawing-room in the morning to kiss
Mamma, who was already dressed to go out, the coils of her black hair
elaborately built up, and her beautiful hands, plump and white, fragrant
still with soap--I had been apprised, by seeing a column of dust
standing by itself in the air above the piano, and by hearing a
barrel-organ playing, beneath the window, _En revenant de la revue_,
that the winter had received, until nightfall, an unexpected, radiant
visit from a day of spring. While we sat at luncheon, by opening her
window, the lady opposite had sent packing, in the twinkling of an eye,
from beside my chair--to sweep in a single stride over the whole width
of our dining-room--a sunbeam which had lain down there for its midday
rest and returned to continue it there a moment later. At school, during
the one o'clock lesson, the sun made me sick with impatience and boredom
as it let fall a golden stre