I glanced at my watch and got up. It is astonishing: except when I am speaking to her I have never seen her glance resting on me, and yet she sees my every movement.—‘Oh, what a lovely rose-tinted watch-face he has!’—I was greatly offended that anyone should comment on my Bréguet time-piece being rose-coloured, in the same way that I should be annoyed to be told that I was wearing a pink waistcoat. I must have looked visibly embarrassed, because when I said that it was actually an extremely fine watch, she in her turn looked embarrassed. No doubt she regretted having said something which put me in an awkward position. We both realized the absurdity of it, and smiled. A stupid thing, but we were sharing in it.—I adore these secret relationships which express themselves by an unobtrusive little smile and by the expression of the eyes, and which cannot be openly declared. It is not that one of us has suddenly understood the other, but each understands that the other understands that he or she is understood, etc., etc.
Whether she wanted to put an end to this conversation which I found so pleasant, or to watch me refuse to stay, or to know whether I would refuse, or simply to go on playing, – the fact was that she glanced at the numbers written on the card table, ran the chalk across its surface, drew some kind of figure unrecognized in mathematics or in painting, looked first at her husband and then from him to me, and said: ‘Let us play three more rubbers.’ I was so absorbed in watching, not these movements but the whole phenomenon known as
‘
This sentence, following straight after mine, interrupted my reflections.—I began to apologize for not being able to stay, but as this required no thought, I went on arguing with myself: How I love her referring to me in the third person. In German it’s rude, but I should love it, even in German. And why can’t she find a suitable form of address for me? It’s obvious that she is uncomfortable calling me by my Christian name, or by my surname and title. Can it possibly be because I … ‘Do stay and have some supper,’ said her husband. Since I was busy pondering the matter of third person forms of address, I failed to notice that my body, having made the politest possible excuses for being unable to stay, had put down my hat again and sunk calmly into an armchair. It was evident that the intellectual side of me was taking no part in this folly. I began to feel extremely vexed, and was just starting to take myself to task when I was diverted by a most agreeable development. She was sketching something with great attention, what it was I could not see, then she raised the piece of chalk slightly higher than necessary and put it down on the table. Then, resting her arms on the sofa she was sitting on and shifting herself from one side to the other, she drew herself up against the back of the sofa and raised her charming little head – her head with the delicately curving profile of her face and her dark, half-closed yet animated eyes, her slender and so, so sharp little nose, and a mouth that, with her eyes, composed a unity and at every moment seemed to convey something quite new. How could one say what, at that instant, it expressed? There was pensiveness, mockery, fragility, the desire not to laugh, self-importance, capriciousness, intelligence, stupidity, passion, apathy, and who knows what else in that expression.—A few moments later her husband went out, no doubt to order supper to be served.
