She, for her part, parried his onslaughts of ecstasy and was satisfied that in spite of his volatile nature and his growing fame, he preserved his old liking for her.
Three years more passed. Then, once, late in autumn he suddenly appeared at Nice, tired, worn out by work, spiritually desolate, unsteadier than ever, but--a full-grown man.
"I have come to be cured by you," he exclaimed the first time he was in her house.
She wept for joy.
Soon they dropped into greater intimacy than ever, and yet she sometimes experienced a sense of shyness which she had not felt before in her relation with him, for the very reason that he was no longer the boy she could look down on with unconstrained motherliness. The difference in years seemed to have been wiped out, inwardly as well as outwardly, and he had grown close to her intellectually, alarmingly close.
He often complained to her of his afflictions--the miserable headaches that kept bothering him, the result of overwork, and then the worries of his profession, the disillusionments. They were by no means formidable, but easily too much for the spoiled darling of fortune. She devoured everything he said. The least little thing of concern to him assumed prodigious importance.
But there seemed to be a good deal that he did not tell her.
"And how about the women?" she asked, smiling, though tortured by suddenly rising jealousy.
"Oh, let's not talk of the women. I've forgotten every one of them. Now you are my one and only one."
She thrilled, but said nothing. Oh, had he known how her whole being lost itself in his!