He could harbor no doubt now. Philip Taverney had told his father that he had sent on Labrie and their maid servant to get a lodging ready in Paris. Hence this was the one. The house in Coq-Heron Street, where the travelers had disappeared—was this with the extra building in the rear.
Gilbert's withdrawal had been so marked that Nicole must have noticed it only for her being absorbed in that idle fit seizing one just arisen. But he had retired swiftly, not to be caught by her while looking out of a garret window. Perhaps if he had lived on the first floor, and his window had given a view within of a richly furnished apartment, he would have called her attention on it. But the fifth flat still classed him among social inferiors, so that he wanted to keep in the background.
Besides, it is always an advantage to see without being seen.
Again, if Andrea saw him, might she not consider that enough to induce her to move away, or at least not to stroll about the garden?
Alas, for Gilbert's conceit! it enlarged him in his own eyes; but what mattered Gilbert to the patrician, and what would make her move a step nearer or further from him? Was she not of the class of women who would come out from a bath with a peasant or a footman by, and not regard them as men?
But Nicole was not of this degree, and she had to be avoided.
But Gilbert did not keep away from the window. He returned to peep out at the corner.
A second window, exactly beneath the other, opened also, and the white figure appearing there was Andrea's. In a morning gown, she was stooping to look after her slipper fallen under a chair.
In vain did Gilbert, every time he saw his beloved, make a vow to resist his passion within a rampart of hate; the same effect followed the cause. He was obliged to lean on the wall, with his heart throbbing as if to burst and the blood boiling all over his body.
As the arteries cooled gradually, he reflected. The main point was to spy without being seen. He took one of Madame Rousseau's old dresses off the clothesline, and fastened it with a pin on a string across his window so that he might watch Andrea under the improvised screen.