Let us seek then, Rose, let us seek even after we have found! Whether we
be denied or heard, let us go on seeking! When we have lovingly
performed the little things necessary that a flower may peradventure
blossom, if it does not give us what we hoped for, does that prevent us
from loving another exactly like it and from tending it with all the
greater skill and care?

Our ignorance must be renewed in the presence of each life that touches
ours. May the quest suffice to keep our faith eternally young, that
wonderful, childlike faith which alone encourages, finds and sets free.

CHAPTER III

1

It was eleven o'clock when I went to meet Rose this morning; but the day
was so dark and the fog so dense that the street-lamps were still lit.

It was gloomy and depressing. Wrapped in a long cloak and huddled in a
corner of the cab, I shivered with cold and nervousness. I reread her
telegram, dispatched from a railway-station before daybreak; and the
pathos of those few words went to my heart:

"Am starting. Ran away yesterday.

"YOUR BABY."

Yesterday? Then she had spent the night at an inn? Why?

Alas, in such circumstances, do not we women usually behave like that,
blindly and illogically? We prepare everything, we look out the trains
and choose the most favourable time for flight; we announce the minute
of our arrival to those expecting us; everything is ready, everything is
decided.... Then the appointed day arrives. The hour strikes, the hour
passes and we do not stir. We have been kept by some meaningless trifle
which is magnified in our excitement and acquires an importance which it
never had before: a word, a look from those whom we are going to desert.
We forgive them when we are on the point of leaving them for ever. We
invest them with a little of our own gentleness and kindness. Even as
the colour of things blurs and fades when our eyes are dim with tears,
so the hardest people do not appear so to the anxious heart of a woman.
And pity gains the upper hand, time slips by and we put off to the
morrow and, on the morrow, we put off again....

Then, one day, we depart all at once, for no definite reason, depart
empty-handed, with an impassive face and without looking round. We
perform the most energetic action almost without knowing it, for even
our will shirks the too-heavy task. It dreads the preparations, it would
like to be able to tell us feebly that nothing i