Desire for Madame de Guilleroy hardly occurred to him; it seemed to be hidden, crouching behind another and more powerful feeling, which was still uncertain and hardly awakened.  Olivier had believed that love began with reveries and with poetic exaltations.  But his feeling, on the contrary, seemed to come from an indefinable emotion, more physical than mental.  He was nervous and restless, as if under the shadow of threatening illness, though nothing painful entered into this fever of the blood which by contagion stirred his mind also.  He was quite aware that Madame de Guilleroy was the cause of his agitation; that it was due to the memories she left him and to the expectation of her return.  He did not feel drawn to her by an impulse of his whole being, but he felt her always near him, as if she never had left him; she left to him something of herself when she departed—­something subtle and inexpressible.  What was it?  Was it love?  He probed deep in his heart in order to see, to understand.  He thought her charming, but she was not at all the type of ideal woman that his blind hope had created.  Whoever calls upon love has foreseen the moral traits and physical charms of her who will enslave him; and Madame de Guilleroy, although she pleased him infinitely, did not appear to him to be that woman.

But why did she thus occupy his thought, above all others, in a way so different, so unceasing?  Had he simply fallen into the trap set by her coquetry, which he had long before understood, and, circumvented by his own methods, was he now under the influence of that special fascination which gives to women the desire to please?

He paced here and there, sat down, sprang up, lighted cigarettes and threw them away, and his eyes every instant looked at the clock, whose hands moved toward the usual hour in slow, unhurried fashion.

Several times already he had almost raised the convex glass over the two golden arrows turning so slowly, in order to push the larger one on toward the figure it was approaching so lazily.  It seemed to him that this would suffice to make the door open, and that the expected one would appear, deceived and brought to him by this ruse.  Then he smiled at this childish, persistent, and unreasonable desire.

At last he asked himself this question:  “Could I become her lover?” This idea seemed strange to him, indeed hardly to be realized or even pursued, because of the complications it might bring into his life.  Yet she pleased him very much, and he concluded:  “Decidedly I am in a very strange state of mind.”

The clock struck, and this reminder of the hour made him start, striking on his nerves rather than his soul.  He awaited her with that impatience which delay increases from second to second.  She was always prompt, so that before ten minutes should pass he would see her enter.  When the ten minutes had elapsed, he felt anxious, as at the approach of some grief, then irritated because she had made him lose time; finally, he realized that if she failed to come it would cause him actual suffering.  What should he do?  Should he wait for her?  No; he would go out, so that if, by chance, she should arrive very late, she would find the studio empty.