"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.