He would go out, but when?  What latitude should he allow her?  Would it not be better to remain and to make her comprehend, by a few coldly polite words, that he was not one to be kept waiting.  And suppose she did not come?  Then he would receive a despatch, a card, a servant or a messenger.  If she did not come, what should he do?  It would be a day lost; he could not work.  Then?  Well, then he would go to seek news of her, for see her he must!

It was quite true; he felt a profound, tormenting, harassing necessity for seeing her.  What did it mean?  Was it love?  But he felt no mental exaltation, no intoxication of the senses; it awakened no reverie of the soul, when he realized that if she did not come that day he should suffer keenly.

The door-bell rang on the stairway of the little hotel, and Olivier Bertin suddenly found himself somewhat breathless, then so joyous that he executed a pirouette and flung his cigarette high in the air.

She entered; she was alone!  Immediately he was seized with a great audacity.

“Do you know what I asked myself while waiting for you?”

“No, indeed, I do not.”

“I asked myself whether I were not in love with you?”

“In love with me?  You must be mad!”

But she smiled, and her smile said:  That is very pretty; I am glad to hear it!  However, she said:  “You are not serious, of course; why do you make such a jest?”

“On the contrary, I am absolutely serious,” he replied.  “I do not declare that I am in love with you; but I ask myself whether I am not well on the way to become so.”

“What has made you think so?”

“My emotion when you are not here; my happiness when you arrive.”

She seated herself.

“Oh, don’t disturb yourself over anything so trifling!  As long as you sleep well and have an appetite for dinner, there will be no danger!”

He began to laugh.

“And if I lose my sleep and no longer eat?”

“Let me know of it.”

“And then?”

“I will allow you to recover yourself in peace.”

“A thousand thanks!”

And on the theme of this uncertain love they spun theories and fancies all the afternoon.  The same thing occurred on several successive days.  Accepting his statement as a sort of jest, of no real importance, she would say gaily on entering:  “Well, how goes your love to-day?”

He would reply lightly, yet with perfect seriousness, telling her of the progress of his malady, in all its intimate details, and of the depth of the tenderness that had been born and was daily increasing.  He analyzed himself minutely before her, hour by hour, since their separation the evening before, with the air of a professor giving a lecture; and she listened with interest, a little moved, and somewhat disturbed by this story which seemed that in a book of which she was the heroine.  When he had enumerated, in his gallant and easy manner, all the anxieties of which he had become the prey, his voice sometimes trembled in expressing by a word, or only by an intonation, the tender aching of his heart.