La Chamade by Françoise Sagan

way of being agreeable. I don't look disarming, I look vacant.'—'Heaven knows what you think about,' he continued, 'At dinner parties you always seem to be brooding over a secret or some bad blow.'—'Antoine, I do brood over a secret...' and she laid her head on his shoulder, whispering: 'Don't brood over things too much, Antoine, all is well.' He would become silent, he dared not tell her what was unceasingly on his mind, what kept him awake during those long nights with Diane, who also pretended to be asleep. 'This can't go on, really it can't go on, why isn't Lucile with me?' This unconcern, Lucile's capacity to waive all problems made him uneasy. She refused to talk about Charles, she refused any plans. Had she, perhaps, bound herself to Blassans-Lignières for selfish reasons? But she seemed so free, avoided so naturally any discussion the moment it turned to money (and Heaven knows that nobody talks so much about money as those who have too much of it...) that he could not imagine her doing anything calculated. She said: 'I have a taste for facility.' She said: 'I hate the instinct of possession.' She also said: 'I was lonely without you.' And he found all this difficult to conciliate. He waited, confused, for something to happen, for someone to ferret them out, for fate to take over his responsibilities as a man, and he despised himself.
    Antoine knew that he was indolent, sensual but moral. No woman had ever attracted him as much as Lucile, but he had had numerous love affairs and remorse had turned his rather insignificant liaison with Sarah into a tragic love story. He knew himself to be easy prey for inner conflicts. In fact, he had almost as great a capacity for misfortune as for happiness, and for him Lucile could be only disconcerting. He did not understand that she had only loved once, ten years earlier, had forgotten all about it and considered their present love as a marvellous, unexpected, fragile and unhoped for gift in which she superstitiously refused to foresee the consequences. She liked waiting for him, longing for him, she liked their concealment as much as she would have liked to live with him openly. Every moment of happiness was sufficient in itself. And if, for the last two months, she was surprised at her susceptibility to adolescent love songs, she never felt personally concerned by the 'you and only you, forever and ever' which was the usual theme. As her only form of morality was the avoidance of self-deceit, she was naturally drawn into a profound, but involuntary cynicism. It seemed as though the fact of being able to sort out one's feelings automatically led to this cynicism, while cheats and liars could remain wildly romantic all their lives. She loved Antoine, but cared for Charles, Antoine made her happy and she did not make Charles unhappy. As she valued both men, she was not sufficiently interested in herself to be ashamed of allowing herself to be shared by both. Her total lack of self-sufficiency made her ruthless; in short, she was happy.
    It was quite by chance that she discovered that she could suffer.
    She had not seen Antoine for three days, by chance they had been invited to different theatres and dinners. She was to meet him at four o'clock and she arrived on time, surprised not to find him at his door. For the first time, she used the key he had given her. The room was empty and the blinds open. For a moment she thought she had made a mistake, as she had always arrived to a darkened room, Antoine lighting only a lamp that stood on the floor, one that lit up the bed and a corner of the ceiling. Amused, she walked about the room she knew so well and yet so little, reading the titles of books on the shelves, picking up a tie on the carpet, examining a charmingly absurd 1900 painting that she had never noticed. For the first time, she imagined her lover as a young bachelor, a fitful worker of modest means. Who was Antoine? Where did he come from, who were his parents? What had