while it made others smile. Anything that was said to them simply made
no impression. They had the impertinently solemn manner common to young
married people, who seem to say:

"You people don't know anything at all...."

Jacqueline's pretty pouting face, with its absorbed expression,
Olivier's happy eyes that looked so far away, said only:

"If you knew how boring we find you!... When shall we be left alone?"

Even the presence of others could not embarrass them. It was hard not to
see their exchange of glances as they talked. They did not need to look
to see each other: and they would smile: for they knew that they were
thinking of the same things at the same time. When they were alone once
more, after having suffered the constraint of the presence of others,
they would shout for joy--indulge in a thousand childish pranks. They
would talk baby-language, and find grotesque nicknames for each other.
She used to call him Olive, Olivet, Olifant, Fanny, Mami, Mime, Minaud,
Quinaud, Kaunitz, Cosima, Cobourg, Panot, Nacot, Ponette, Naquet, and
Canot. She would behave like a little girl; but she wanted to be all
things at once to him, to give him every kind of love: mother, sister,
wife, sweetheart, mistress.

It was not enough for her to share his pleasures: as she had promised
herself, she shared his work: and that, too, was a game. At first she
brought to bear on it the amused ardor of a woman to whom work is
something new: she seemed really to take a pleasure in the most
ungrateful tasks, copying in the libraries, and translating dull books:
it was part of her plan of life, that it should be pure and serious, and