XIII.
"Does she love me?" I asked myself the next morning on awakening. I feared to question myself more. I felt that her image—the image of the young girl with the "rire forcé"—was engraved on my mind, and that I could not easily efface it. I returned to L., and remained there the entire day, but I only caught a glimpse of Annouchka. She was indisposed; she had a headache. She only came down for a few moments, a handkerchief wrapped about her forehead. Pale and unsteady, with her eyes half closed, she smiled a little, and said,—
"It will pass away; it is nothing. Everything passes away, doesn't it?" and she went out.
I felt wearied, moved by a sensation of emptiness and sadness, and yet I could not decide to go away. Later on I went home without having seen her again.
I passed all the next morning in a kind of moral somnolence. I tried to lose myself by working; impossible, I could do nothing. I tried to force myself to think of nothing; that succeeded no better. I wandered about the town; I re-entered the house, then came out again.
"Are you not Monsieur N——?" said suddenly behind me the voice of a little boy.
I turned about,—a child had accosted me.
"From Mademoiselle Anna."
And he handed me a letter.
I opened it and recognized her handwriting, hasty and indistinct:—