2nd. Forêt de Fontainebleau. 3rd. Didn’t see her. 4th. Stroll in the Jardin du Luxembourg. 5th. Long drive in the country. Glimpse of Chartres Cathedral …
And today, on May 6th, he was later to write: I’m in love with her. I couldn’t live without her. For that’s how things would stand from now on. A melancholy love like a fire smouldering in an abandoned mine. Madeleine appeared to suspect nothing. She regarded him as a friend, that was all, a pleasant companion with whom she could talk freely. No question, of course, of introducing him to Paul! Flavières did his best to play the part of a man of private means who dabbled in law to give himself something to do, and who was delighted with the job of helping a pretty woman to pass the time away.
The accident—if you could call it an accident—at Courbevoie was forgotten. At least it was never referred to. It had not been without its effects—it had given him a certain authority over her—and she knew how to greet him in a way which said as plainly as words that he had saved her life. She was attentive and considerate, as she might have been to any uncle or guardian. A word of love would have been indelicate! Besides, there was Gévigne. And Flavières made it a point of honour to report to him every evening, telling him exactly what they had done. Gévigne would listen to the end, frowning; then they would once again discuss Madeleine’s strange affliction.
Flavières shut the folder, stretched his legs out and folded his hands on the desk… Madeleine’s affliction… Twenty times a day he turned it over in his mind, examining every action, every attitude, every word she had spoken. She wasn’t ill. Yet there was something wrong with her. On the one hand she seemed thoroughly to enjoy life: she loved the whirl and bustle of the crowd; she was gay, sometimes exuberant; her conversation was lively and amusing, and anyone would have at once put her down as a happy person. That was the bright side ofthe picture. The other was nocturnal, murky, mysterious. On this side she was cold, remaining quite untouched by what went on around her and quite incapable of any real volition, let alone passion.
Gévigne was quite right: as soon as you stopped entertaining her, holding her back into this life, she sank into a sort of numbness which was neither meditation nor gloom, but a subtle change of state. It was as though her soul might at any minute float away and gradually dissipate itself in the wind. Several times Flavières had seen her slip silently into this condition as she sat with him, like a medium whose real self has been summoned to another world.
‘Anything the matter?’ he would say.
A flicker, as of recognition, would pass over her face, and, with a vague, hesitant smile and a tentative groping, as it were, for her own muscular powers and reflexes, she would slowly come to the surface. There she would blink for a second, then say:
‘No. I’m quite all right.’
And the look in her eyes would reassure him.
One day, perhaps, she would open up and tell him more about herself. Meanwhile he was cautious. He rarely let her drive, for instance. She did it very well, but with a sort of fatalism. She lacked the instinct of self-preservation, ready to take whatever came. He was reminded of a time when he had been under treatment for blood-pressure. The slightest movement had cost him an effort. If he had seen a thousand-franc note on the floor, he couldn’t have bothered to pick it up. It was like that with Madeleine—as though a spring had broken. And, if in fact she drove well, he could never rid himself of the feeling that, suddenly faced by an obstacle, she wouldn’t trouble toavoid it, would simply accept it… At Courbevoie, she hadn’t struggled in the water.
Another thing: when they went for a drive, she never chose their destination. If he offered her a choice, she would dodge it, saying she didn’t mind, that it was all the same to her. Yet
And today, on May 6th, he was later to write: I’m in love with her. I couldn’t live without her. For that’s how things would stand from now on. A melancholy love like a fire smouldering in an abandoned mine. Madeleine appeared to suspect nothing. She regarded him as a friend, that was all, a pleasant companion with whom she could talk freely. No question, of course, of introducing him to Paul! Flavières did his best to play the part of a man of private means who dabbled in law to give himself something to do, and who was delighted with the job of helping a pretty woman to pass the time away.
The accident—if you could call it an accident—at Courbevoie was forgotten. At least it was never referred to. It had not been without its effects—it had given him a certain authority over her—and she knew how to greet him in a way which said as plainly as words that he had saved her life. She was attentive and considerate, as she might have been to any uncle or guardian. A word of love would have been indelicate! Besides, there was Gévigne. And Flavières made it a point of honour to report to him every evening, telling him exactly what they had done. Gévigne would listen to the end, frowning; then they would once again discuss Madeleine’s strange affliction.
Flavières shut the folder, stretched his legs out and folded his hands on the desk… Madeleine’s affliction… Twenty times a day he turned it over in his mind, examining every action, every attitude, every word she had spoken. She wasn’t ill. Yet there was something wrong with her. On the one hand she seemed thoroughly to enjoy life: she loved the whirl and bustle of the crowd; she was gay, sometimes exuberant; her conversation was lively and amusing, and anyone would have at once put her down as a happy person. That was the bright side ofthe picture. The other was nocturnal, murky, mysterious. On this side she was cold, remaining quite untouched by what went on around her and quite incapable of any real volition, let alone passion.
Gévigne was quite right: as soon as you stopped entertaining her, holding her back into this life, she sank into a sort of numbness which was neither meditation nor gloom, but a subtle change of state. It was as though her soul might at any minute float away and gradually dissipate itself in the wind. Several times Flavières had seen her slip silently into this condition as she sat with him, like a medium whose real self has been summoned to another world.
‘Anything the matter?’ he would say.
A flicker, as of recognition, would pass over her face, and, with a vague, hesitant smile and a tentative groping, as it were, for her own muscular powers and reflexes, she would slowly come to the surface. There she would blink for a second, then say:
‘No. I’m quite all right.’
And the look in her eyes would reassure him.
One day, perhaps, she would open up and tell him more about herself. Meanwhile he was cautious. He rarely let her drive, for instance. She did it very well, but with a sort of fatalism. She lacked the instinct of self-preservation, ready to take whatever came. He was reminded of a time when he had been under treatment for blood-pressure. The slightest movement had cost him an effort. If he had seen a thousand-franc note on the floor, he couldn’t have bothered to pick it up. It was like that with Madeleine—as though a spring had broken. And, if in fact she drove well, he could never rid himself of the feeling that, suddenly faced by an obstacle, she wouldn’t trouble toavoid it, would simply accept it… At Courbevoie, she hadn’t struggled in the water.
Another thing: when they went for a drive, she never chose their destination. If he offered her a choice, she would dodge it, saying she didn’t mind, that it was all the same to her. Yet
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