"Why was she singing? Was she then happy? To what condition of her soul does that unusual effusion correspond?" An inexplicable agitation seized me. Without thinking, I went up to her, calling her by name.
When she saw me enter her room she was surprised, and remained for a moment speechless; she was evidently startled.
"Are you singing?" I said, so as to say something, embarrassed and astonished myself at the eccentricity of what I was doing.
She smiled a hesitating smile, not knowing what to answer, not knowing what attitude to assume toward me. And I thought I read in her eyes a grieved curiosity, the fugitive expression of which I had already noticed more than once—the compassionate curiosity with which one gazes at a person suspected of insanity, a maniac. As a matter of fact, I saw myself in a mirror opposite, and my face looked emaciated, my eyes sunken, my mouth puffed up—that feverish appearance that I had had for a month.
"Are you dressing to go out?" I asked, still disturbed, almost ashamed, not finding any other question to ask her, preoccupied only with avoiding silence.
"Yes."
It was in the morning, in November. She was standing near a table trimmed with lace, and on which scintillated the scattered innumerable little articles that serve nowadays to beautify women. She wore a dress of vigonia, of a dark color, and held in her hand a light-colored shell comb mounted in silver. The dress, very simple in cut, set off her slim, graceful figure. A large bouquet of white chrysanthemums, placed on the table, reached up as far as her shoulder. The sun of the St. Martin's summer entered through the window, and in the air there was a perfume of chypre, or some other odor I could not recognize.
"What perfume do you use now?" I asked.
"Crab-apple," she replied.
"I like it," I said.