Page:Gide - Strait is the Gate.pdf/175

173 STRAIT IS THE GATE

one does to playing with a child. She passed beside me swiftly, absentminded and smiling; and I felt she had become more distant than if I had never known her. It even seemed to me sometimes that there was a kind of challenge in her smile , or at any rate a kind of irony and that she took amusement in thus eluding my wishes. ... And at that it was myself that I turned to upbraid, not wishing to give way to reproaches, and, indeed, hardly knowing what might be expected from her now, nor with what I could reproach her . Thus the days from which I had promised myself so much felicity passed by. I contemplated their flight with stupor, but without desiring to increase their number or delay their passage, so greatly each one aggravated my grief. Two days before my departure, however, Alissa came with me to the bench beside the deserted marl-pit; it was a bright autumn evening; as far as the cloudless horizon, every blue-tinted detail of the landscape stood out distinct and clear, and in the past the dimmest of its memories. I could not with hold my lamentations as I showed her my present unhappiness — as I showed her the happiness I had lost.