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145 STRAIT IS THE GATE

looking at the stormy sea, but I was too miserable looking at it without you; I imagined suddenly that you were waiting for me in my room, and went in. I knew I shouldn't be free in the afternoon; Madeleine had told me the day before that she meant to come, and as I expected to see you in the morning I did not put her off. But, perhaps, it was to her presence we owed the only pleasant moments of our meeting. For a few minutes I had the strange illusion that this comfortable conversation was going to last a long, long time. And when you came up to the sofa where I was sitting beside her, and bent down and said 'good-bye,' I could not answer; it seemed as though it were the end of everything: it suddenly dawned upon me that you were going. "You had no sooner left with Madeleine, than it struck me as impossible, unbearable. Will you believe it? I went out! I wanted to speak to you again, to tell you all the things I had not told you; I was already hurrying to the Plantiers' ...It was late; I didn't have time, didn't dare ... I came in again, desperate, to write to you — that I didn't want to write to you any more a good-bye letter because I felt too much that our correspondence was nothing but a vast mirage,