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TOMORROW!... Those who come after us will have some difficulty in
understanding what silent despair and weariness of spirit without
grounds that word evoked during the fourth year of the war.... Oh, such
a weariness! So many times had hopes been destroyed! Hundreds of
tomorrows just like yesterday and today followed on, each similarly
devoted to emptiness and waiting--to waiting for emptiness. Time no
longer ran. The year was like a river Styx which encircles life with the
circuit of its black and greasy waters, with its somber, watery, silky
flood that seems no longer to move. Tomorrow? Tomorrow is dead.

In the hearts of these children Tomorrow was resuscitated from the
grave.

Tomorrow saw them seated again near the fountain. And tomorrows followed
one another. The fine weather favored these very brief meetings, every
day a little less brief. Each one brought a lunch in order to have the
pleasure of exchanging. Pierre now waited at the door of the Museum. He
wanted to see her art works. Although she was not proud of them she did
not make him beg at all before showing them. They were reproductions of
famous paintings in miniature, or portions of paintings, a group, a
figure, a bust. Not too disagreeable at the first glance but extremely
loose in drawing. Here and there quite true and pretty touches; but
right alongside the mistakes of a pupil, exhibiting not merely the most
elementary ignorance but a reckless ease perfectly careless of what
anyone might think.--"Enough! Good enough the way they are!"--Luce
recited the names of the pictures copied. Pierre knew them too well. His
face was quite drawn from his discomfiture. Luce felt that he was not
pleased; but she summoned all her courage to show him everything--and
this one too.... Woof!... it was the ugliest one she had! She kept up
her mocking smile which was directed to her own address as well as to
Pierre's; but she would not confess to herself a pinch of vexation.
Pierre hardened his lips in order not to speak. But at last it was too
much for him. She showed him a copy of a Florentine Raphael.

"But these are not its colors!" said he.

"Oh, well, that wouldn't be surprising," said she. "I didn't go and look
at it. I took a photo."

"And didn't anybody object?"

"Who? My clients? They haven't been to look at it either.... And
besides, even if they had seen it, they don't look so narrowly! The red,
the green, the blue--they only see the f