had quite lonely afternoons. But they did not depress her; she gazed out at the rain, at the cloud-phantoms. And she dreamed . . . along the path of light. She smiled at her dream. Even though she very much feared the absurdity of it for herself, she could not help it: a new youthfulness filled her with a gentle glow, a new tenderness, like the delicate bloom of a young girl's soul dreaming of the wonderful future . . . And then she would come back to herself suddenly and smile at her sentimentality and summon up all her matronly common-sense; and she would think:
"Come, I oughtn't to be sitting like this! . . . Come, I oughtn't to be acting like this and thinking of everything and nothing! . . . Certainly, I like him very much; but why cannot I do that without these strange thoughts, without dreaming and picturing all manner of things and filling my head with romantic fancies . . . as if I were a girl of eighteen or twenty? . . . Oh, those are the things which we do not speak about, the deep secret things which we never tell to anybody! . . . I should never have suspected them in myself . . . or that they could be so exquisitely sweet to me. How strangely sweet, to dream myself back to youth in visions which, though they never really take shape, yet make a shining path to those cloudy skies, to imagine myself young again in those dreams! . . . If I never had these thoughts and dreams before, why do I
