But I was already having second thoughts:
“No, nothing, thanks.”
What would be the good, with him right there, of looking at the blemishes of a face more and more unaccustomed to being studied in broad daylight? And what could my mirror have taught me?
Wasn’t a careful makeup with brown pencil, bluish kohl, and red lipstick sufficient, yesterday like every day, to draw attention to my eyes and mouth, the three highlights, the three magnets of my face?
No pink on my somewhat hollow cheeks, nor under the eyelids which fatigue and frequent blinking have already delicately checkered . . .
The joy of Fossette, who was sitting on my knees and straining toward the door, supplied us with intermittent conversation, as did the sweetness of that still wintry forest, gray twigs against a chinchilla sky . . . But whenever I leaned out to inhale a bit of the slight breeze, laden with the bitter musk of the old rotting leaves, I felt my admirer’s eyes alighting self-confidently all over me . . .
Between Paris and the Meudon woods we hadn’t exchanged a hundred sentences.
The countryside doesn’t make me talkative, and my old friend Hamond gets bored the moment he leaves the city limits of Paris.
Our taciturnity might discourage anyone except an admirer selfishly rewarded by having me there before his eyes, a prisoner in his car, passive, vaguely pleased by the ride, and smiling with every jolt from the damp, potholed road . . .
Fossette imperiously decided with a curt yelp that we were to halt, and that some urgent business summoned her deep into those bare woods, on that forest road where the puddles from a recent shower were shining like round mirrors.
The three of us followed her without protesting, with the long strides of people who frequently walk . . .
“It smells good,” the Big Ninny suddenly said, sniffing the air. “It smells like back home.”
I shook my head:
“No, not like your home, like ours!
Hamond, what does it smell of ?”
“Of autumn,” Hamond said in a weary tone.
At that word we halted and said no more; we looked up at a rivulet of sky tightly enclosed by very tall trees, and through the living murmur and whisper that a forest exhales, we listened to the liquid, clear, shivering song of a winter-defying blackbird . . .
A small reddish animal darted out from where we stood, a marten or a weasel, which Fossette claimed to have flushed, and we followed the excited dog, obtuse and swaggering, while she barked,
“I see it!
I’ve got it!” as she followed an imaginary track . . .
Finally incited myself, I hastened after her down the avenue of trees, given over to the animal pleasure of the chase, my skunk bonnet pulled firmly down to my ears and my legs free as I lifted my skirt with both hands . . .
When I stopped, out of breath, I found Maxime right behind me:
“Oh, you followed me?
How is it I didn’t hear you running?”
He was breathing hard, his eyes gleaming under his irregular eyebrows, his hair falling uncombed from his run, very much the charcoal burner in love, and not at all reassuring.
“I followed you . . . I took great care to run at the same pace as you, so you wouldn’t hear my footfalls . . .
It’s very easy . . .”
Yes . . . it’s very easy.
But you have to think of it first.
I would never have thought of it.
Vexed, careless, and still intoxicated with a nymph’s brutality, I laughed right in his face, defying him.
Tempted, I wanted to rekindle the malicious yellow light at the bottom of those lovely irises flecked with gray and russet . . . A threat showed up in them, but I didn’t give in, stubborn as those insolent children who wait to be slapped, and even ask for it.
And my punishment came, in the form of an angry kiss, poorly administered: in short, an unsuccessful kiss that left my mouth hurt and disappointed . . .
I carefully weigh all these instants of the preceding day as I walk down the Boulevard des Batignolles, not in order to relive them with pleasure, nor to find an excuse.
There is no excuse, except for the man I provoked.
“It’s so unlike me!” I exclaimed to myself yesterday while we were walking back to where Hamond stood, unhappy with each other and mistrustful . . . Oh, how can I be sure?
“You’re your own worst enemy! . . .” Deep down in the most criminally impulsive woman, you’d find feigned thoughtlessness and feigned carelessness, and I’m not even the most guilty woman!
People ought to be hard on women who shout,
“Oh, I don’t know what I’m doing any more!” They should detect a healthy dose of premeditated craftiness in their apparent confusion . . .
I don’t deny my responsibility, even partial.
What will I say to that man tonight if he wants to take me in his arms?
That I don’t want, and have never wanted, to tempt him, that it was all a game?
That I offer him my companionship for the period of a month and ten days that separates us from my tour? . . .
No, I must make a decision!
I must make a decision . . .
And I walk and walk, increasing my pace every time the glass of a show window reflects my image, because I find on my face a somewhat too actressy expression of anxious determination, with insufficiently earnest eyes beneath knitted brows . . .
I know that face!
It assumes a mask of austerity and renunciation the better to await that small miracle, that sign from my master Chance, the glowing words he’ll write on the black wall after I’ve turned off my lamp tonight . . . How good the air smells around these little carts full of damp violets and white jonquils!
An old man with a very mossy beard is selling entire snowdrop plants, with their bulbs still earth-coated and their pendent, bee-shaped flowers.
Their scent is like that of orange blossoms, but very faint, almost imperceptible . . .