And as she passed him, light,
soothing, as softly murmured as the perfume of a flower, telling him what
she had to say, every word of which he closely scanned, sorry to see them
fly away so fast, he made involuntarily with his lips the motion of
kissing, as it went by him, the harmonious, fleeting form.
He felt that he was no longer in exile and alone since she, who addressed
herself to him, spoke to him in a whisper of Odette. For he had no longer,
as of old, the impression that Odette and he were not known to the little
phrase. Had it not often been the witness of their joys? True that, as
often, it had warned him of their frailty. And indeed, whereas, in that
distant time, he had divined an element of suffering in its smile, in its
limpid and disillusioned intonation, to-night he found there rather the
charm of a resignation that was almost gay. Of those sorrows, of which the
little phrase had spoken to him then, which he had seen it--without his
being touched by them himself--carry past him, smiling, on its sinuous and
rapid course, of those sorrows which were now become his own, without his
having any hope of being, ever, delivered from them, it seemed to say to
him, as once it had said of his happiness: "What does all that matter; it
is all nothing.
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