but into which he could never penetrate. He had left the theatre in the little provincial town where this had happened several years before, telling himself that it would be madness to write to her, that she would not answer his letter, quite prepared to give his fortune and his name for the creature who now lived within him in a world so vastly superior to those too familiar realities, a world made beautiful by desire and dreams of happiness, when he saw emerging from the stage door the gay and charmingly hatted band of actresses who had just been playing. Young men who knew them were waiting for them outside. The number of pawns on the human chessboard being less than the number of combinations that they are capable of forming, in a theatre from which all the people we know and might have expected to find are absent, there turns up one whom we never imagined that we should see again and who appears so opportunely that the coincidence seems to us providential, although no doubt some other coincidence would have occurred in its stead had we been not in that place but in some other, where other desires would have been born and another old acquaintance forthcoming to help us to satisfy them. The golden portals of the world of dreams had closed upon Rachel before Saint-Loup saw her emerge from the theatre, so that the freckles and spots were of little importance. They displeased him nevertheless, especially as, being no longer alone, he had not now the same power to dream as in the theatre. But she, for all that he could no longer see her, continued to dictate his actions, like those stars which govern us by their attraction even during the hours in which they are not visible to our eyes. And so his desire for the actress with the delicate features which were not now even present in Robert’s memory caused him to fling himself at the old friend whom chance had brought to the spot and get himself introduced to the person with no features and with freckles, since she was the same person, telling himself that later on he would take care to find out which of the two the actress really was. She was in a hurry, she did not on this occasion address a single word to Saint-Loup, and it was only some days later that he finally induced her to leave her companions and allow him to escort her home. He loved her already. The need for dreams, the desire to be made happy by the woman one has dreamed of, ensure that not much time is required before one entrusts all one’s chances of happiness to someone who a few days since was no more than a fortuitous, unknown, insignificant apparition on the boards of a theatre.
When, the curtain having fallen, we moved on to the stage, alarmed at finding myself there for the first time, I felt the need to begin a spirited conversation with Saint-Loup. In this way my demeanour, since I did not know which one to adopt in a setting that was new to me, would be entirely dominated by our talk, and people would think that I was so absorbed in it, so unobservant of my surroundings, that it was quite natural for me not to be wearing the facial expressions proper to a place in which, to judge by what I appeared to be saying, I was barely conscious of standing; and seizing, for the sake of speed, upon the first topic that came to my mind:
“You know,” I said, “I did come to say good-bye to you the day I left Doncières. I’ve never had a chance to mention it. I waved to you in the street.”
“Don’t speak about it,” he replied, “I was so sorry. I passed you just outside the barracks, but I couldn’t stop because I was late already. I assure you I felt quite wretched about it.”
So he had recognised me! I saw again in my mind the utterly impersonal salute which he had given me, raising his hand to his cap, without a glance to indicate that he knew me, without a gesture to show that he was sorry he could not stop. Evidently the fiction of not recognising me which he had adopted at that moment must have simplified matters for him greatly. But I was amazed that he had hit upon it so swiftly and before a reflex had betrayed