eaver who would not leave where they lay the severed
threads, but collected and rearranged them, without any thought of
pleasing me, or of toiling for my advantage, in the different order
which she gave to all her handiwork. Without any special interest in my
love, not beginning by deciding that I was loved, she placed, side by
side, those of Gilberte's actions that had seemed to me inexplicable and
her faults which I had excused. Then, one with another, they took on
a meaning. It seemed to tell me, this new arrangement, that when I saw
Gilberte, instead of coming to me in the Champs-Elysees, going to a
party, or on errands with her governess, when I saw her prepared for
an absence that would extend over the New Year holidays, I was wrong in
thinking, in saying: "It is because she is frivolous," or "easily lead."
For she would have ceased to be either if she had loved me, and if she
had been forced to obey it would have been with the same despair in
her heart that I felt on the days when I did not see her. It shewed me
further, this new arrangement, that I ought, after all, to know what
it was to love, since I loved Gilberte; it drew my attention to the
constant anxiety that I had to 'shew off' before her, by reason of which
I tried to persuade my mother to get for Francoise a waterproof coat and
a hat with a blue feather, or, better still, to stop sending with me to
the Champs-Elysees an attendant with whom I blushed to be seen (to all
of which my mother replied that I was not fair to Francoise, that
she was an excellent woman and devoted to us all) and also that sole,
exclusive need to see Gilberte, the result of which was that, months in
advance, I could think of nothing but how to find out at what date she
would be leaving Paris and where she was going, feeling that the most
attractive country in the world would be but a place of exile if she
were not to be there, and asking only to be allowed to stay for ever
in Paris, so long as I might see her in the Champs-Elysees; and it had
little difficulty in making me see that neither my anxiety nor my
need could be justified by anything in Gilberte's conduct. She, on the
contrary, was genuinely fond of her governess, without troubling herself
over what I might choose to think about it. It seemed quite natural to
her not to come to the Champs-Elysees if she had to go shopping with
Mademoiselle, delightful if she had to go out somewhere with her mother.
And even supposing that