ing in contour! Pierre would have been incapable of
saying what was the form of her features or what the color of her eyes
or the modeling of her lips. All he could bring back was the emotion
already in himself. All his attempts to give precision to the image
merely ended in deforming it. He was no more successful when he went to
work to find her in the streets of Paris. At every turn he believed he
had seen her. It was either a smile or a white young neck or a gleam in
some eyes. And then the blood shook in his heart. There was no
resemblance, none whatever, between these flying images and the real
image which he sought and which he believed he loved. Well, then, he did
not love her? Surely he loved her; and that is why he saw her everywhere
and under every shape. For she just is every smile, each radiance, all
life. And the exact form would be a limitation.--But one longs for that
limitation in order to clasp love and to possess it.

Though he might never see her again he knew that she existed, she
existed, and that she was the nest. In the hurricane a port. A
lighthouse in the night. _Stella Maris, Amor._ Oh, Love, watch over us
at the hour of death!...

* * * * *

ALONG the quay of the Seine beside the Institute he wandered, looking
with little attention at the shelves of the few _bouquinistes_ who had
stuck to their posts. He found himself at the foot of the steps of the
Pont des Arts. Raising his eyes he perceived her for whom he had waited.
A portfolio of drawings under her arm, she came down the steps like a
little doe. He did not reflect for the shadow of a second; he rushed
forward to meet her and while he ascended toward her who was coming
down, for the first time their gaze rested the one on the other and
entered. Arrived in front of her and stopping short, he began to blush.
Surprised, seeing that he blushed, she reddened too. Before he could get
his breath again the little deerlike step had already gone beyond him.
When strength returned and he was able to turn about her skirt was
disappearing at the turning of the arcade which looks upon the Rue de
Seine. He did not try to follow her. Leaning against the balustrade of
the bridge, he saw _her own_ look in the stream that flowed below. For
some time his heart had a pasture new.... (Oh, dear, stupid children!)....

A week later he was loafing in the Luxembourg Gardens which the sun was
filling with a golden softness. Such a radiant February in that