her at all, I felt, would prove a disappointment to me.
On the other hand, were she in the habit of exhibiting
herself in this market place of gallantry regularly like
the other ladies, I should again feel hurt, and in the
end I did not know what it was that stirred me more:
the hope of seeing her or the fear of meeting her.
There were few people in the Bois. On the grand lake drive, carriages were passing slowly at a considerable distance from one another, the drivers perched high upon their seats. Sometimes a brougham would leave the strung-out line, turn and disappear to the trot of its horses, carrying away God knows where the profile of a woman, or some white and pallid faces, or the end of a ruffled dress seen for a moment through the window of the coach door. . . . My heart and the blood in my temples were beating faster, impatience caused the tips of my fingers to twitch; my neck was tired from turning in the same direction in an effort to penetrate the shadow of the carriages and began to hurt; anxiously I was chewing the end of a cigar which I could not make up my mind to light, for fear of missing her carriage in the act. Once I thought I saw her inside a brougham, which was going in the opposite direction.
"Turn, turn," I shouted to the driver, "and follow that brougham."
I did not at all reflect whether or not I was acting properly towards a woman to whom I had been introduced only the day before, and casually at that, one whose reputation I wanted to see rehabilitated at all costs. Half leaning against the lowered window of the coach door, I never lost sight of the brougham. And I was saying to myself: "Perhaps she recognized me! Perhaps she is going to stop, get out of the carriage, appear in the street." Indeed, I was saying this to myself without the slightest notion of attempting
