as unconventional," said Maurice without any resentment.

"Tell me, Maurice, is it nothing to you now to be with me alone?... You
need an angel to inspire you. That is sad, for a young man like you!"

Maurice appeared not to hear, and asked gravely:

"Gilberte, do you feel that your guardian angel is watching over you?"

"I, not at all. I have never thought of him, and yet I am not without
religion. In the first place, people who have none are like animals. And
then one cannot go straight without religion. It is impossible."

"Exactly, that's just it," said Maurice, his eyes on the violet stripes
of his flowerless pyjamas; "when one has one's guardian angel one does
not even think about him, and when one has lost him one feels very
lonely."

"So you miss this...."

"Well, the fact is...."

"Oh, yes, yes, you miss him. Well, my dear, the loss of such a guardian
angel as that is no great matter. No, no! he is not worth much, that
Arcade of yours. On that famous day, while you were out getting him some
clothes, he was ever so long fastening my dress, and I certainly felt
his hand.... Well, at any rate, don't trust him."

Maurice dreamily lit a cigarette. They spoke of the six days' bicycle
race at the winter velodrome, and of the aviation show at the motor
exhibition at Brussels, without experiencing the slightest amusement.
Then they tried love-making as a sort of convenient pastime, and
succeeded in becoming moderately absorbed in it; but at the very moment
when she might have been expected to play a part more in accordance with
a mutual sentiment, she exclaimed with a sudden start:

"Good Heavens! Maurice, how stupid of you to tell me that my guardian
angel can see me. You cannot imagine how uncomfortable the idea makes
me."

Maurice, somewhat taken aback, recalled, a little roughly, his
mistress's wandering thoughts.

She declared that her principles forbade her to think of playing a round
game with angels.

Maurice was longing to see Arcade again and had no other thought. He
reproached himself for suffering him to depart without discovering where
he was going, and he cudgelled his brains night and day thinking how to
find him again.

On the bare chance, he put a notice in the personal column of one of the
big papers, running thus:

"Arcade. Come back to your Maurice."

Day after day went by, and Arcade did not return.

One morning, at seven o'clock, Maurice went to St. Sulpice to hear Abbe
Patoui