"There is nothing, there is nothing. I am mistaken. I am imagining something that doesn't exist."
She had not seen them together for two months; and she knew, had understood from a word dropped here and there, that Van der Welcke had not seen Marianne during those two months which had passed since that Sunday evening. And now, suddenly, she was struck by it: the shy, almost glad hesitation while the girl was standing at the door of Constance' drawing-room; her unconcealed delight at being able to come back to this house; the almost unnatural joy with which she had sobbed at Constance' knee . . . until Van der Welcke came in, after doubtless recognizing the sound of her voice in his little smoking-room, as transparent as a child, with his clumsy excuse of searching for a newspaper. And now at once she was struck by it: the almost insuppressible affection with which they had greeted each other, with a certain smiling radiance that beamed from them, involuntarily, irresistibly, unconsciously . . . But still Constance thought:
"I am mistaken, there is nothing; and I am imagining something that doesn't exist."
And the thought passed away, that they were really in love with each other; only this time there remained a faint wonder, a doubt, which had never been there before. And, while she talked about
