The sun was beginning to shine.

I had been walking and walking....

I had just left the brambly path which cuts a bed of sand through the forest, laying bare its rusty bowels.

I felt full-fed by the subtle nourishment that space distils, crammed with air, and my forehead seemed drawn taut. Was it the motes dancing in the sunbeams? I don't know. I was spent. The fancy throbbed beneath my temples, did its work, and I let it go.

You must have been sincere at least once in your life to know what an hour is face to face with yourself, a whole hour, step by step, minute by minute. And I never had been sincere. Now I escaped from my clogging limbs, from the clay of myself. Until now I had done nothing but breathe and sleep. All of a sudden I was alive. It was intoxicating....

Dizzy though I was I felt an exhausting need to keep on going.

I penetrated deep into the woods walking at random, my mind almost a blank. When the leafy undergrowth enclosed me, I let myself slide to the ground on to the dried-up grass, the fallen twigs, and the crackling russet pine-needles.

All about in a dense circle, the rugged plant life. A moving splendor in the play of the varying greens. Damp, aromatic smells. And a sense of invisible swarming life everywhere....

The silence, so fresh and penetrating, was like a living thing, and I turned round several times thinking I heard some one behind me panting. No one. The uneven trunks of the great trees; lower down, behind their serrated green, a slate-colored screen of mist; here, the shadow-broidered ground; above, the patches of blue sky—and I.

I....

I was a little ashamed to link my Self to myself in this way, to give my Self its value. The old attitude of humility, of attaching no importance to Self—was that going to begin again? Now I felt more profoundly alone than in the harmonious exaltation I had experienced while walking. In a mixture of alarm and idleness I tried not to remain motionless, but to plant my elbows on the ground and lie flat on the grass with my head between my hands, so as to divert myself with living noise.... I could not.

Then I stretched out on my back, my eyes fixed on the sky, my body relaxed; and the full-blooded tide of my thoughts flowed over me.

They flowed on, of themselves, no longer halting, as they had on the walk, on the edge of each discovery; I no longer kept saying to myself as when I hammered out my pitiless steps: "I have lied, I have always lied, I have lived only on the outskirts of my life...." The air was still, the soul alone sounded, and the soul also was at peace. I went down into the depths—to find the soul's sweet beginnings, I suppose.

There were no beginnings. Though my early memories came back obediently, they were not illuminating. The catechism.... With outstretched hands and rounded voice, the AbbÉ Daudret was telling of the wicked, those whom the Almighty was waiting to punish in the hereafter. Crushed by the word wicked, stifled by the heavy solemnity of the church, withdrawn into my littleness, I comprehended, with dull, recurring pangs, that I was among the damned, I, the model little girl. We went home again; I was calm, unruffled, obedient, but if any one used the word sinful in my hearing, if I came across it threatening in black and white, I felt as if a brutal fist had struck my shoulder; I blushed, a swift remorse flamed in my bowels; that word was meant for me, I was the guilty one.

At last one day I found out why I was guilty. I had not known before.

I had been summoned to the small drawing-room; the shutters were closed; my mother, a dim figure in the twilight, was saying good-bye to a lady in deep mourning whose veil framed a face of alabaster. How beautiful she was! The quivering shadows made a halo around her. I scarcely dared to approach her because I remembered the whispers that buzzed about her name and the envy that glittered in the eyes of the women. How beautiful she was!... Her heavy lashes weighed down her lids.... I wanted to say something to her, just one word. I could not, could not even repeat what my mother, leaning towards me, told me to say.... As the lady was leaving she turned in the doorway, fixed her great wide eyes on me and said with an even sadder note in her velvety voice: "The child is going to be beautiful."

I heard myself exclaim with joy. As soon as the door closed, I ran to the glass, which seemed to be waiting for me. My whole being was aflame as I raised myself on tiptoe to receive the first echo of her words from the mirror.... But my mother was already coming back and saying severely: "You know it isn't true...." I was still on tiptoe. "You are ugly!" My spirits dropped and instantly were bottled up in me. Everything was clear, I understood, I understood....

It was an epitome of my life. The seasons passed; I maintained silence, always, hiding my good qualities, hiding my bad qualities, encountering only remorse between the two extremes; for it is by remorse that they are joined together.

Consequently my mind stored up no happening, no deeper or fainter impression, only remorse. Remorse never left me.

But yes, it did leave me, just now, suddenly, at the bend of the road, where the bank slopes gently down to the ditch, when I bowed my head to the thought, "They think me gentle, simple, just like the others; they say I am cleverer. It is only because I dissemble more than the others."

At that I raised my eyes.

"What after all does my lying matter to them? Do they want the truth? No. They spurn it, scourge it, hunt it down. They are not worth trying to find out the truth for. Enough."

The sunshine seemed to tighten its clutch on the earth and whitewashed the pathway.

"But it is not this matter of lying that one must bewail; the point is, there is an essential something else. There is—I feel there is—the true life, my life, and it is this true life that I have betrayed. My true life is now pushing on, bravely, along the gray stony path.... I don't know where it is going, nor what it is, since I have never seen it in anything that I have done, but it must live. If I die for it, what does it matter? It will live on. It was hidden in my body, it stayed there ashamed of itself, then came at night to beset me with its sadness and put me to sleep with the taste of dust and ashes on my lips; and in the morning, as soon as my eyes opened, was it the light that flooded over me, painted the walls of my room with flame, and instantly died away?"

The blue density of the forest, the corrugated, soaring columns of the trees, high and distinct in their parallel lives, the clear quivering azure are all around me. Where is their obscure will?

I have come to these things, I have lain down in their midst, I have watched them. Before these things one no longer lies. And behold, I find myself.

I see myself as I am.

My heavy hair, flame-colored, which gives out little glints of light above my forehead, my complexion with the mother-of-pearl coloring of the full daylight, the violet reflections in my eyes deepened by the scanty shade of the trees, the firm red line of my lips, and beneath my light dress, the fleet suppleness encased in my limbs.

Is it possible? I am no longer ashamed to be like this, nor to know what I am like. I have let fall, at last, like a bothersome mask, the modest air that makes people say: "She's all the prettier because she doesn't know she's pretty."

Do you think, pray, that there is a single woman in the world who, if she is good looking, doesn't know it?

I know, I know with a vengeance, that I am beautiful; I know it better than anything else about myself. There are not only looking-glasses, there are all the men. Whether old man, beggar, or chance passerby, you drink in, in one long intoxicating draught: "I am beautiful." And the women, if you know the terror in their eyes, the appeal, the envy, and their mute defense.... You seem unaware, smiling, distant, but you are on the eager watch for the pain you inflict.

To please.... In the presence of other people to please is wicked vanity, strutting, flaunting vanity; but here, on the bony ground, it is simply a bit of me. It is a power which has been given me, I shall not give it back; it is merely a harmony, a response to the beauty I feel, a craving to convince, a very strong craving; my life is lovelier than I.

My life is here. But what makes up my life? Not entirely my rosy good health, nor this firm equilibrium which exercises control in the centre of my being. My health and poise are, chiefly, the things that remove me from my life. My life is a need to use my muscles, it is vigorous movement, it is the notion I have that I can crush the world between my arms; yes, the longing to run, to take part in everything, to shout aloud, to dance; this animal ardor and glow in movement, this uncontrollable blood, this body swelling with liberty, with sap, with bursts of laughter, this unexpected gift of myself to myself, this curiosity and contentment, this zest and turmoil....

I have heard others speak of youth, I have seen the word of quicksilver glitter on the pages of books; I am still ignorant of its meaning; I am not quite twenty.

I hug to me all that is mine; it is not much. At first there was nothing above my head but a liquid ocean of silence, I saw nothing but a forest without perspective, but my watchful solitude became supernatural; and now as I see the solemnity of the trees, their strong solid reaching up towards heaven, as I see myself, I feel very deeply that I am alive for the first time.

I do not wish to think of the future. Let the future wait for me; it is as if a new era were beginning....

And may memory never take possession of this morning of utter unreserve; memory might distort it. And may memory never say: "This was the day of your birth and you were excited."

I am not unduly excited.... The present is always very simple. The sun is only an iridescent frolic, which flits and laughs without resting on the chapped bark of the pines.

This moment—this and none other—is made up of my robust body, the lullaby rustle of the wind-stirred leaves, the fragrance of resinous wood, the screech of a great bird, and the sky cleft by its black and white passage.

No illumination or help from elsewhere. Slowly, gropingly, by great effort, I arrive at lukewarm moments in which it is as though my head were leaning on my heart. Am I going to know at last and make up my mind? But when I put my hand on my breast, everything collapses and I have to begin all over again.

It is because there is an empty past which rings to the touch like an empty bowl, a lack of practice which benumbs your arms, a sort of shame.... You don't attain to your real truth at the first attempt.

And then above all—you must be honest with yourself—you don't seek your true self with a constant heart; far oftener you try to distract your mind from the thought of it. About me on the ground are patches of light, and I am simply bent upon catching them. I stretch out my hand, stoop down, put my cheek to them, they quiver and vanish; in their place a piercing warmth steals dancing over my face.

Then, without my having done anything and without my being worthy of it, the sacred mood of revolt returns, lifts me up, and forces me to my knees; I hear the rising breath of a sudden call....

Is it my life, O God? Whither does it go—answer!—when it develops in a deep breast, and you approach, again and again, as I am now approaching, something infinite whose name you seek to know?

II

Will the noise never stop? But there are walls to shut it out.

Let them hop about, shout, dance, amuse themselves. As for me, I have left them, I am alone in my room, I don't want to see or hear them any more.

I burrow my head desperately in the dark depths of the cushions. In vain. The eddying music follows its implacable course, drapes its arabesques of melody about me, and when I stop my ears, still keeps whirling round and round.

A mazurka. Who was it begged for a mazurka? Ah yes, I remember. When I left the group of young girls sitting on the watch, a quivering basket of artificial flowers, one of them was saying: "After the mazurka, I'll take him out into the garden, where I'll manage to make him kiss me."

Which of them? It is easy to imagine her: they are all alike. She laughs, I am certain, and expands her budding breasts; her beaded tunic sparkles and strikes a rivulet of light against her pretty legs; she has glossy hair faultlessly dressed and when she turns round in the mazurka, you see she has one of those plump, discreet faces over which feelings slide without leaving a mark.

But I am forgetting. Mother had to take part in the dance too, as it was the only one she knew and it unrolled tender memories. She braced herself, then started off, her features gently composed, leaning on my father, who accommodated his step to hers while seeming to guide her. "Let's see, that's not it ..." and they set out again—one, two, three, four—heavy, both of them, with their reputation as a happy, united couple, and laden with the looks that follow them.

If one knew....

The engaged couples have disappeared, swallowed up by the nearest dark corners, where passion is of scarlet and nothing exists but arms and lips and bodies surmised. When the music will have finished and they will have reappeared, the chatter and the sharp raw laugh of the young fiancÉe will be heard; she will open her eyes wide, like this; her childish mouth will be seen, and her slim figure, which retains an air of awkward shyness. "How unsophisticated she is," they will say in gratitude to her for being an example of the velvety purity of the young girls.

The last measures. They are all perspiring, out of breath, soberly triumphant, and as they go back to their chairs each man gives a last squeeze of the slender arm he is about to relinquish.

My father is entirely engrossed in his guests; he has led mamma, dizzy, back to her chair, and has moved off. As she sits there with her eyelashes fluttering, you would think she has returned from a wonderful long journey. "I am happy, happy," she is reflecting. "I have such a good husband." The wounds of every day are closed—they have to be overlooked—and if any cloud darkens the horizon, it is that she is thinking of me: "But that is what marriage means, my little daughter; you'll see, it is just a big renunciation: you will change, you too, and do like the rest; look at me; am I unhappy?"

No, you are not unhappy, my poor little mother, with your injured voice, your charitable eyes, and your lifeless gestures; you are dead; it is twenty years since you have had a will of your own, a desirous look, a single manifestation of impatience, a stray impulse, an hour, anything you can call your own; it is twenty years since you renounced. But your husband never goes out, he has his wife and children, he earns your living, a comfortable living; everyone respects him, and "one cannot have everything."

As for you, you can live contentedly with a twenty-year-old unhappiness upon your shoulders; you breathe, you go about; the women around you have the same fate, and this sustains you. But we, mother, who are different, the daughters of my generation, we who have sensual hearts, reasoning minds, new energies—I, who have done nothing, I cannot, I tell you, and if a future is given me, I want to snatch whatever it holds.

The music has stopped; I cannot hear them any more.... It is as if my heart were beginning to live.

The tangible darkness of the room deepens little by little. Its peace, its solitude. I can distinguish the walls, or rather the vaporous shadows of walls, the windows where the cold light of the garden is paling, the indistinct rectangle which stretches along the ceiling ... and in that silence in which God is rooted is the hunted soul returning to its place.

Ah, shattered again! The music sets the hubbub going....

Besides, certain words are too beautiful, and you say them to intoxicate yourself, but when they are gone, you realize, your arms are empty.

I asked myself: "What is youth?" This is what youth is: that terrible thing, that sin, that torture which one must stifle: it is my pure intoxication defiled by their impure intoxication. I wanted to sing my youth, give it out, exhale it. Jeering life is below, with its people, its fouling habits, its sneers and titters. They were quite right; you can't escape it. You must adapt yourself to it; it is the law. I will adapt myself; I will have a husband; he will be kind, faithful; there will be no one beside him; he will be all in all to me; he will skirt the shores of my being; he will pronounce judgment on all my actions, my comings and goings, my looks; his word will be final. I shall lie in his bed every night; he will see my timid body, my naked sleep, my sleeping life; he will stand upright in my life as in a garden which one is not afraid to ravage, and when truth will pass by us, he will sit still and let it pass.

I shall have no more confused desires, no more sudden impulses of kindliness, no more agonized expectancy, and no more of those questionings which make a stifling desert about me. I shall be satisfied. If my hell returns at times to visit me, that red-eyed narrow-chested hell, my husband will be there, seated opposite me at table; he will raise his head. "What's the matter, aren't you hungry?"

The soul, the essence, the deep voice from within—words, mere words.... There is nothing but the noise below. And only that. And I must return to it. Well, come on, go down, speak, smile. All existences are alike. When there is no longer a single lie left to tell, it means the time has come to die.

Why obstinately wish to discover a way out and knock your head against a stone wall? There is no way out. You must not cherish the impossible; get up and go gaily downstairs. A little cold water, a little powder; this is a grief you are not permitted to indulge in.

Once again and for all time I shall go to them. If they are boisterous, spineless, unobservant, with no warmth in them, perhaps after all at some time at the bottom of their hearts they have felt, if only vaguely and vanishingly, the jealous fever which weighs like a heart; perhaps they have suffered; perhaps in looking back, when the sunshine has burst forth, they have understood that the period of their twenties was sacred. The twenties! And we, the youth, say to ourselves: wisdom is within us, the future is within us, and reason, salt, blood, the truth. It is ourselves, only ourselves. And we wish to open our hearts and say to those who pass: "Come to us, ask us. It is from us that everything can be learned; we can explain the secret things, the inner meanings, the words hidden in the folds of the body, the startling confessions that are breathed on the highways, everything that is changeful, for nothing is permanent but change; we know everything, and more than everything; we who have never loved, we know the whole of love." Perhaps they, the dancers downstairs, have stretched out their arms, tasted the fresh morning with their lips, felt the beating of a heart of sobs; perhaps they have once been their hope. I shall do what they have done; it is my turn; my time for withering will surely come too.

The farandole! Ah, they are holding each other's hands, the old folks are also joining in. "Let's enjoy ourselves!" Their faces are tense, and above their footsteps and above the avalanche of their bodies, I hear the shrill cries of the young girls.

They are leaving the drawing-room; it sounds as if they were approaching.

Don't come here. Even if it is dark in this room, even if I have wept, and even if the walls have taken on this aspect of distress, it does not mean that I can be reduced to your level.

The galop moves faster, wilder. The chain in the center is flung together in a heap, those at the end are almost scattered. The last one waves his arm in the air. The noise sickens me.

The floor of my room quivers. I will go down, I will go down to them....

But not yet....

III

It is done....

How shall I bring myself to believe it, how tell myself it is true, that it is done, that it is an accomplished fact? And why is it that an absurd recollection obsesses me instead of the thing that has just taken place? Recollections are not considerate. They thrust themselves upon you willy-nilly.... It was one day when I was still little and wore my hair in a plait down my back tied with a red ribbon. An idea struck me and set me all a-quiver, to surprise my mother by secretly filling her vase with flowers, the beautiful blue vase with the band of gold, erect on its massive pedestal like a slim thing on a throne. I was very careful, I held my breath, my movements were sedulously controlled.... The vase toppled and made a clear, ringing sound. I can still hear it. My father came in unexpectedly. He stopped—he always was severe—took me by the shoulder, and shook me like a wind-tossed sapling. Then he dragged me to my room and on the threshold gave me a slap which sent me staggering. There was a whistling in my ears. I was drunk, dazed, completely bewildered.... Then he shut the door.

When I came to my senses, I ran to the glass, I don't know why, for nothing, "just to see." A wine-colored mark streaked with red was spreading over my cheek. I held the back of my hand up and felt the glow even without touching it.

It was burning, but, oddly enough, it did not hurt. I was conscious of not suffering pain, and instantly a sadness filled me, utter and sudden as a bitter flood. I didn't know why I was sad. Even now I only glimpse the reason imperfectly. Children who are simple are also more subtle than we. It was my fate to be defrauded, not to have a definite reason for shedding tears over myself, not to suffer in real earnest from an undeserved punishment, not to be able to cherish the compensation or possess the impregnable asylum, the inexhaustible resource that grief always is. It was when I touched my cheek which did not hurt that I threw myself on my bed crying, alone, yes really alone for the first time. And to-night it is just the same way.

I have run away from home. Here I am cast out on the street in the night. There is a fine blinding sleet; I do not know as yet where I am going to spend the night, but that doesn't hurt any more than the slap on my cheek hurt. Am I unfeeling? I push on straight ahead, the houses follow one another, the streets meet and cross, the separate shadows are only one and the same shadow. I stop now and then arrested by the consciousness of having forgotten to suffer.

I have been walking a good hour.

How penetrating the night is. An hour of utter aloneness, an hour empty and bare. Ah, that it may be so until the end. Let misery come, the unknown, humiliations, but let the truth come also. You perish trying to do without the truth....

That scene.... Can the memory of it be annihilated, so that nothing remains, not even the grotesque memory of a memory?

He blazed with fury, he lashed the air first with one arm then the other; his features swelled with rage and suddenly looked youthful.... Now that I come to think of it, he looked exactly the same as on the day of the blue vase, only this time he did not dare to slap me. That's why he gesticulated so wildly. I listened to him at first with an indifferent air; I was accustomed to his storms—well, the thing would soon blow over. And before my eyes the familiar scene, which the lighting up of the chandelier always placidly ushered in, was being set according to the daily ritual—the smoking tureen, which Leontine, who had entered with her padded tread, was placing on the table (she removed her red hands, finger by finger, and stole her sidewise glance at me), and the transparent play of the glasses, with iridescent stems giving back the glitter of the silver and the white sheen of the tablecloth.

Although my eyes were occupied in following intently the details of the dinner-table, a heavy travail was going on within me. A legion of slumbering desires, halting impulses, dead aspirations were rousing themselves noiselessly, almost without my consciousness. Thoughts that come in the morning when one's eyes open, "To-day! to-day," hopes dashed to the ground, deceptions, sighs—their tune rose to the surface and changed to a peal which drew me on. Yet I remained on the spot, like a beast with lowered head led by a rope.

I saw his gesture in time.

He was advancing towards me, his fist raised. Did he mean to strike? What did it matter? I was no longer in a condition to judge. A roll of thunder was shivering my inner trouble into a thousand bits, there was a flash of lightning which unloosened everything, even my tongue. I was speaking, I was speaking at last....

What did I say? Really, almost nothing, because in the frantic swiftness of his anger he broke in upon my first words. "Get out, get out!" He showed me his hand as if he were cursing his hand, too, forever.

The door closing behind me made a very long and very impressive sound.

I was on the landing of the staircase. No sound. The electric light cruelly exaggerated the red spiral of the carpet and touched each copper bar of the banisters with a tiny comet.

Alone.

And suddenly ... what did it all mean? I no longer understood. That outburst of cries, that tempest, that sort of comedy, my reply ... what ... I went and sat down, tempted equally to laugh and to cry. I wanted to think ... but it was already done, an almost outside force was pushing me off my hinges. "Escaped!" I was like a prisoner who sees the door left open inadvertently.

I knocked gently, my entire presence of mind returning to me in a rush. Leontine came with a pseudo-contrite expression and an air of saying "Hush!" while beneath her manner was the concentrated delight of an animal lying in wait. "They are at dinner," she whispered while I got my things together, a frock, a blouse, some toilet articles, a little money, some linen, a few books.

I closed the front door on myself, slowly, without faltering, slowly. It was done. It was not difficult.

A faint wind blew from the street below which chilled me.... Ah, you are trembling already, you are drawing back. That fine courage of yours, where is it? Where is your all-powerful will, and your still surer hope?...

It was not out of cowardice that I was trembling; but as I advanced towards my Self, street by street, house by house, through my first ordeal, I got a blunter, deeper knowledge of my Self, and a sudden fear entered my breast.

I am really not a strong person. What had been struggling in me so forcibly was not my own strength; it was simply the reaction from the others. A strong person would know at the very first step what mandate to derive from the power animating him; before destroying he would have built up. When a bird finds its cage open and takes flight, it does not hesitate, it has the idea of space, it spreads its wings, it knows where to fly, and how high.

I know nothing. I am setting out, that's all. Neither before nor behind me is the irresistible urge which is the start of a great career. Nor do I see close by the rising shape of my life. Nor about me is the ringing mirth of faery liberty. Nothing but a little tiredness, a little emptiness in my head, a little emptiness in my heart.... I am not a strong person.

Good-bye, mother, good-bye to your transparent eyes, to your shoulders which will always shrug for the wrong side, good-bye to your tender lying.

You see, I am no longer faint-hearted, because I can walk away from you forever and venture upon a vague future without a glow of eagerness. All I need is something to beckon to me.... There is nothing ahead of me except the quiet artery of a thoroughfare hemmed in by inky houses and the darkness, which melts away at the panes of the street-lamps and makes them dance and quiver below and twinkle like eyes at the top. Liberty has the taste of fog....

BOARDING-HOUSE

Shall I cross this unfriendly threshold covered with a mangy rug? I should so much like to stop walking and go to sleep. Shall I choose this house which exhales the smell of a cellar, this gloomy shelter, these dingy walls? Shall I....

Come on, fate is everywhere. This is the place I must enter.

IV

I have found work....

A fortnight, a hundred hopes, a fortnight.... The unfriendly atmosphere of stiff faces. "The position is filled." Stairs mounted four steps at a time, then descended gravely, catechisms begun with questions that embarrass and so often ending with questions that make you blush. Then one fine day—by what magic?—the position is not filled, and you answer yes to everything required; the sky is clear, you will start to-morrow.

I have not drained to its dregs the joy there is in working at my nondescript job from morning until evening. To work for your bread, to feel dignified and straight. You cannot talk, to be sure, but at least you do not lie, you are in repose, you let the waves of your being pile up, and every evening you return to a docile home, where the silence is always nigh to flowering....

The boarding-house, however, is not hospitable; you never satisfy your hunger, and my narrow room with its threadbare carpet and mouldy ceiling is like a badly kept cage. But it's Sunday morning and I have undertaken to make it inviting.

A handkerchief twisted about my hair, a white blouse and bare arms.... By persisting and rubbing again, by chasing the dust, by trying a place for the books twenty times over, by pushing the chairs about, by scraping away the layers of encrusted filth, I am bound to triumph. To judge of the effect, I stop several times and perch on the tattered arm of the red-flowered armchair; the place looks better already. But to it again!

No pictures, no ornaments. I have taken down the sentimental prints hypocritically concealing the scars of the wall-paper. Nothing but the bare room and the high window with its dim panes.

The bed of a doubtful mahogany burrows into the bashful retreat of the alcove. The wardrobe would wabble if it were not secured by a thick rope tied to the rosette on the front. The rosette is typical of a curious character that the room has for all its dinginess. There was an attempt to decorate with a profusion of flowers. Flowers everywhere, spread broadcast over the walls, cutting off the corners of the wash-boards, and trailing their sallow procession in a border around the top of the walls. They are even woven into the stuff on the back of the armchair, they appear almost effaced in the maroon-colored linoleum, and ravelled out and faded in the cretonne curtains.... In this cemetery, the sweet violets blooming on my table have a sensual, almost insolent splendor; their petals look red.

For all its bareness, my room radiates light; the meagre sunlight shines in through the window and is already transfiguring the place; I feel comfortable in it.

---

Oftener and oftener I ask myself what is my reason for existence, my true, my sole destiny. Doubtless one must sleep in a room for a long time before encountering the soul that prepares itself there.

I am, I know, like a person who wants to build a big house without having a site or materials, who says nevertheless: "No, not this site, no, not this material." But this is of no importance, I realize. Once you have submitted to the wholesome discipline enjoined by poverty, you receive in return energetic muscles and a patient outlook.

I wait; and no longer having any need to complain or criticize, I wait with a smile. Everything is simpler than one thinks, and everything is easier, and it seems to me that—

Someone is knocking at the door.

"May I come in?"

The landlady, Mme. NoËl.

Mme. NoËl is more of an imp than a woman. She has the figure, the voice, and the darting roguishness of a slim young thing of twelve.

When I was getting settled the first morning, I suddenly heard her insect-step close by—I had left my door open—and without giving me time to draw back, she besieged me with questions:

"How old do you think I am?"

"I don't know."

"Guess anything."

"Thirty-four ... thirty-three ... thirty."

On looking at her closely a few seconds, it seemed to me she was probably forty.

"Fifty-two, my dear!" To convince me of her age she stuck her finger under a slab of hair waved and dyed red and actually exposed an abundance of fading white hair.

Her face was no bigger than a fist, with cheeks like baked apples. Her shrewd naked eyes pried about. She came farther into the room and perched lightly on one of my rickety pieces of furniture, balancing it with her body. Then she began to unfold the story of her life, rummaging, unpacking, digging it up by huge armfuls: her husband, her lover, and then another, a painter she adored. The first one came back.... Love, adventures.... So it is possible to speak about your love and adventures?

Before leaving me—I was quite dazed; which must have been evident—lowering her voice a little:

"He is so good.... I myself am not crazy about him, but he loves me so...."

"He?"

"The boarding-house—it is not only for what it pays, you understand. It's for the company!"

"The company?"

With the springy elegance of a cat, her tapering elbows breaking the evenness of her outline, Mme. NoËl slid on to the bed. The mattress reared up, the coverings billowed, the pillow, struck slantwise, was about to fall. But she needed so little room, and she carefully patted the hollow she made for herself.

"Well, is there nothing you want?... Ah, these young things—a handkerchief round their heads and they still look pretty."

Instinctively I pulled off my handkerchief. I stammered: "To keep off the dust" and—what could I do to make her go?—I smiled awkwardly.

"Oh, by the way, I came near forgetting to tell you. If ... you want to receive in your room ... after all, what of it? You surely have somebody.... It's just between us women. A beautiful girl like you, it would be a shame.... You won't be bashful, will you? To me love is sacred. And you will tell your little secrets to Mme. NoËl? I have told you mine. Only of course you will be careful not to make any noise. I say this on account of the Russians in the next room. They used to receive swarms of people up to all hours. The rumpus! I tell you, I put a stop to it. But you, you're different. I liked you from the start."

I had to answer, I was going to answer ... but my tongue was dry with confusion. Besides, how edge a word in? There she was back at her huge pile of love stories. She even tried to pump me, lifting and lowering her powdered little nose; one scrap of information she set aside for use presently. At last she disappeared trippingly with a pointed au revoir which crisped the hide of her cheeks.

An odor of imitation white lilac persists, but so much sunshine streams in through the open window, so many quickening exhalations that the odor will soon be dissipated.

Love ... yes....

Perhaps by listening hard to the inner voice you may get to let it speak out loud. If I give in to this habit, I want to hear myself say: "I do not like love." I even want to add: "Keep it away," because love seems to be an outside force which smites or spares without your having deserved or banished it.

I have seen too many couples in which the man is nothing but a craving for conquest, the woman nothing, absolutely nothing, but a need to be conquered. I have seen too many who have not been visited by grace and have damned themselves to mutual ruin. A veritable attack and a semblance of defence. I have seen what is taken for love.

I have seen women steeped in trickery; the wilier they were the more love surrounded them. I have seen the heavy looks of men set about everywhere like traps.... I am worth nothing as yet, but my sound heart—I refuse it. And I say it quite low to exorcise the invisible danger: I do not like love.

"To me love is sacred...."

I understand fully what those small, naked, prying eyes were glorifying. And in the adventurous life of those eyes I see neither more nor fewer blemishes and lies than in the eyes of the young girls. Neither more nor fewer. At moments there even flashed in those eyes sparks, reflections, gleams....

---

A cloud is darkening the window; my room is obliterated.

But if by leaning forward and boldly offering my face to the sun and stretching out further, I could take in all his golden bounty and all his light?

I withdraw hastily from the springtime window because when a gentle flame ran over my wrist I became aware of lack of dignity: my untidy hair, the dust on me, the disorderly room.

Since the sun lives, since I long for it, love must exist. I shall find the proof of it. Quickly, my Sunday frock, order about me, flowers....

Keep it far away from me. I do not feel I am ready....

V

Trude's twenty-fourth birthday. Twenty-four candles around the monster of a cake. Trude announces that Edda, the youngest of us, is to light the candles when we're ready for the toasts and the dessert.

I lent my vases, my old red-flowered armchair, and my draperies. This morning when the preparations were completed and their voices in triple unison leapt to me: "Come and look!" I was in the room in three bounds like an answering echo.

It really looked nice. Who would have recognized Clara's impossible room? Heavy ropes of foliage dotted with roses festooned the walls, my beautiful blue stuff entirely hid the toilet-table, flowers covered the mantelpiece and starred the corners of the mirror; and the table covered with a white cloth was gay with pyramids of fruit.

Now the guests are all here except Markowitch, who said beforehand he would be late. "I am not going to seat you," Clara cries to them above the rising hubbub. "Choose your own places." And she turns her back to give the last touches to the table. Her heavy braided knot hangs low on the nape of her neck. In spite of the two spreading wings of her skirt at her waist line she looks thinner than ever in her greenish dress. Someone glides up behind her, a pink arm for an instant twines about her waist. "Clara, can I help?" She turns round. Dahlia.

Dahlia is not an ordinary creature; she is no one; she is the young girl. But that really is saying nothing. Juliet and Miranda are dead; our times are not made for a creature of the dawn who is supposed to be finer than the promise of herself, but who is already herself; who is supposed not to be ignorant, who is pure and who, in order to love, does not await love.

Dahlia comes of another age; she comes from the country of fjords and legends. Her father was exiled, she wanted to go with him, they had no money; they made almost the whole journey on foot. One evening when their heavy limbs would carry them no further, they were stranded in a squalid quarter on the outskirts of Paris. They took a room.... The next day the man did not get up. And since then Dahlia has bowed her head to the yoke and works all day long for a poor monthly wage in an office where the walls press upon her like a vice. "It's to keep up my father's spirits," she said with a shake of her head when I saw her the second time.

I shall never forget the first time. I had come in a little later than usual, and probably more tired, too. I did not even think of lighting the lamp, the dusk was unreal ... heavens!... a vision took shape between the threshold and the shadows, scarcely daring.... There was a brow set in pale gold, the delicate blur of a face, eyes like a thousand forget-me-nots; between two young arms the strait, retiring modesty of the angels, and their light movements also. She drew nearer. "We have made a cake, the sort we make at home, let's divide." She disappeared. Her present remained behind on my table....

In her thin linen dress this evening, with a whiff of paradise about her, Dahlia seems to be enveloped in a pink illumination. She smiles on everybody as one must smile at happiness when one catches a glimpse of it.

"Your beautiful red dress," she assures Trude, gently clasping the soft spindles of her hands.

How can Trude remain simple and genuinely Puritanical beneath her trappings of beaded crimson plush and cuirass of some hodgepodge of gold caught in at the hips. I fancy she is too simple for finery to add to her personality. Real or imitation the fineries give way; it is she who adorns them. Whatever she wears is sanctified and comes to resemble her, everything except her threefold name, Gertrude, Trude, Trudel.

She has the peculiar brilliance of the Russians, sombre, subterranean, almost undefinable. Whatever she does, whether she laughs, or is excited, or talks with fire of ordinary things, she always has a finger lifted in the air and her wide gaze raised Christ-like. She has the mouth of an evangelist. Her irises set in clear white have glints of jet. She wears the glossy foliage of her black locks straight back from her forehead, an intense forehead crowning her like a diadem.... What other woman would dare the supreme immodesty of displaying a bare forehead? What woman would gain by doing it? The strange thing is, Trude is beautiful only by a kind of miracle; the least little bit more, and her cheeks would stick out over the cheekbones of a Tartar; the least little bit less, and her nose would be obliterated. The lakes of her eyes tranquilly conceal the raging waves in their depths. How many, by a shade of ill-luck, have escaped beauty? Trude, by a miracle, has escaped ugliness.

Mania, her sister, so different with her agile, insinuating body, lovingly fingers the presents. "You have not seen everything, Trude. Do come." Books, prints, china, and elegant embroidered articles—pretty things all from poor people who will soon be setting out on foot in the darkness for their distant lodgings in order to save carfare. For we are all as poor as poor can be. Except Markowitch. Mania told me he was "immensely rich," had at least two hundred dollars a month spending money.

It is hard to say whether it is our poverty that creates this comradeship among us. You come in and you feel at ease, you feel good, you love all of them, even Lonnie, the little Swiss with cheeks lacquered with rouge, and even Michael with his tight compressed nose peaking out of the profile of a hen—Michael perhaps more than the others.

So much the worse for Markovitch: we are going to begin. The hubbub dies down a little; everyone finds a place, two on the same chair, some on the bed, a good many on the floor, young men, young girls holding each other's hands, so close together, so pure, that I can still not accustom myself....

"It is your turn, Mania."

A song, liquid, then fiery, comes from among the reeds and carries you far off—down there—to those wild plains chiseled by the wind where the streams, driven to the surface and threshed by their rocky beds, have the fury of torrents. What a potency of attention on these serious faces!

Isn't that Markovitch?

"Come in!"

With his hardened features wrought in granite he, too, is a force. His bulbous eyes search the gathering and find what they are looking for.... Dahlia raises her head, blushes, and is veiled in delicate purple up to the golden edge of her hair. She is aware of the love of this great spoilt boy; we are all aware of it; but she has refused to be his wife because she does not love him. He will not speak of it again; nevertheless they continue to meet straightforwardly. With a free, rounded movement of her arms, like the handles of an amphora, she points to a vacant place beside her. "Here." Then in dismay: "Don't make a noise."

Prikoff is telling of a childhood recollection. You seem to see him as both the fantastic gnome and the father in the tale. You see huts assailed by icy blizzards, hazy visions of bodies blue with cold, love of somewhere else.... Despite his huge jaw and unkempt mass of hair, what benignity, mildness, and gentleness. It is as though he were talking to little children gathered close about him.

Is time passing? No one notices it, we have forgotten it. Time escapes youth gathered together and bound in a sheaf; it escapes Clara's bosom from which a plaintive lied is rising, while the hungry hands around Dahlia, who is doling out the manna, make time tarry. A real poor folk's supper, the supper of persons who are hungry at all hours. Thick slices of rare meat on bread, solid pastry, big bright fruit. One should see these robust young girls munching even the meat.

How fond I am of them all! Among them I feel for the first time what the human voice really is; for the first time feel the warmth which is shared and communicated from being to being, which makes of a single entity a group of entities, of a field of separate ears of corn the human harvest.

I wouldn't know how to choose among them. But one of the young men might slightly frighten and disconcert me; his accent might seem barbarous. My trim dress, my too-dainty shoes, and my fluffy blouses, all the things that constitute my element, might cause me to feel compunction. And maybe too I might feel ashamed of the hour I spend every morning anxiously pressed close to the glass as if I were begging myself to be beautiful.

I should have the same feeling on behalf of the girls as for myself; at bottom I do not discriminate between men and women. I should go even further. If friendship drew me to one of them, my compunction would change to grief. Really, can one forgive Clara her over-trimmed dress conceived in a nightmare? Can one forgive all of them their down-at-heel shoes, the lack of care and regard for others that they show in their appearance?

Should I adjust my days with no ups and downs in them to their volcanic days? "What's it all coming to?" cries Trude sometimes, and throws herself on her bed sobbing and losing herself in her emotions. Time passes and dies—one day, two days—suddenly she rises. She has forgotten her office, her meals, everything. She leans her forehead against the window-pane, and her tears flow bitterly.

If we became intimate, would they forgive me my neat room, my punctuality, my scrupulous adherence to rule and system, my moderation in everything? In the first days of our being neighbors they used to say: "You know, the little Frenchwoman who always comes and goes at the same time and makes so little noise and uses powder?" That quite described me.

This evening of the reunion of these serious creatures runs on by leaps and bounds and rises to a pitch by fits and starts. There is a glowing dewiness about Dahlia; Markovitch follows her with the green pupils of his bulbous eyes. And all of a sudden the whole company is fired at the same time. Without expecting to they burst into song—who threw the spark?—and the room lights up like a hearth all aglow with voices....

Fifteen flames mingled, but only a single flame. It is a song that rages and mounts higher, and jerks and jolts, and is convulsed with raucous shouts, in which the joy becomes frenetic and the laughter has a shudder in it. They bring to their singing the fervor and the earnestness of application that they bring to everything.

---

I am sitting in the retreat of the little chimney-piece hidden from their eyes, and I should like to ask their forgiveness for not knowing their fervid song and not being in harmony with them. I should like to ask pardon of all of them for everything.

I should like to ... I should like to....

Breathes there a human being on earth who has nothing to forgive, whom one has nothing to forgive?...

To be with him, his equal, close to him, face to face with him, and alone with one.

VI

The two Loiseaus and I were sitting in their dining-room, a narrow rectangle with waxed floor and small straw mats here and there exactly like a convent parlor.

The evening—a dark evening out of doors—encompassed the walls with mystery. The darker it grew the less we felt like getting up and lighting the lamp. Why bother after all? There was a whole grate full of flames. They leaped and emitted a lively red crackling, shot forth luminous circles, hung high in the hearth, dancing tongues of fire, orange-colored mountain crests, aigrettes of blue light, grimaces of demons ... whirlpools ... fairyland ... crash and collapse ... foolery....

All of us felt drowsy, each imprisoned in his own silence. The shadows quivered gently above our shoulders. The silence, a trifle stagnant emanating from the three of us, seemed to be compressed up under the toned-down white of the ceiling.

I was curled up in front of the hearth, my eyes at the mercy of the glowing surge, my chin thrust forward. A languid sense of well-being spread all around, played over the hollow of your arms, and padded the nape of your neck: you thought of nothing.

The two Loiseaus are people who know how to be silent; you spend Friday evening with them, and everything—except themselves—tells you that they are pleased with the presence that makes three silhouettes dance in the room.

They are not very old, but there's no denying they are old bachelors, because in their company you don't feel the torturing constraint and embarrassment which the others make you feel because you're a woman.

When you come, they hold out their hands good-naturedly. RÉmy, the great big patient RÉmy, takes my hat, my gloves rolled into a ball, and my cloak. He steps on my cloak and is vaguely alarmed. This adds to his confusion, and when he hangs my things on the rack in the hall he is so awkward in his carefulness that my hat rolls to the ground. We sit down and talk of the office—you cannot start by not talking—and when every topic is exhausted, I suggest making tea, a suggestion well worth the making just to rouse the gourmand look in the old boys' eyes. "Oh yes, some tea." You can almost hear them purr.

I busy myself with an ease become superlative. It is possible that for an instant I find myself a woman again between two attentive men, converted into the household goddess—she who performs the rites and dispenses the food and offers the milk, just a thimbleful, while the men's eyes are upon her as she bends over the cups. This constrains my movements and makes me tread more lightly and mince my steps. I scarcely displace the shadows.

My two old friends!

RÉmy pursues his reading with a frank absorption which dominates his whole body. His heavy forehead bulges, his clenched fists form two undefined cubes on the page. Migo (when I look at him I call him Migo, too), rolls his cigarette. This evening he is inclined to be talkative. He rubs up his memory:

"The first day you came to the office what a timid manner you had."

The recollections play upon an irresistible note. RÉmy emerges from his corner, his good blue eyes rising to the bait; a vision hung on a thread, persons long faded. And it must be confessed that all three of us let ourselves be captured; the same smile widens our features.

The door-bell rings.... Yes, it rang.

The triple peal sends our heads apart. RÉmy rises, hostile and resigned. He is always the one to open the door.

Waiting in every circumstance, even when nothing is at stake, is painful. The spirit recoils and contracts, and space is left for thoughts of an inevitable misfortune and for the twinkling vision of the things which disappear. In a single instant life can completely change its aspect....

A sweeping draught. It brings in the voice of a young man. I want to leave. The two Loiseaus hover about him. "What a surprise! How nice!" They rub their hands. "Come in and sit down!"

It is too late to leave; the stranger is already bowing to me, and the mingled exclamations pretty well hide my stammering. I am so ashamed of myself for stammering.

The newcomer seats himself near the fire on the little black chair to the right of Migo. He wants the lamp to stay unlighted. But it is no longer the same. Our silence has been routed, and the languor, and the warmth also....

I am in a good position to observe him. How old? Thirty-four, thirty-five perhaps. Is he really handsome? Hard to say. He is too dark. His face is strongly chiseled, his cheeks sunken, his forehead hard as a hammer. The long line of his jaw lends refinement to his countenance, which is lit by eyes fearlessly open, in which the gray, in spots, seems steeped in phosphorous. His gestures are repressed and rather commanding. He talks little, but when he does talk his fire contrasts with the rarity of his words, gives them value, makes them seem to issue all alive from the bowels of the earth, while he sits with his body upright, as if at a distance, the flicker from the hearth enamelling, then removing, the burnished black of his hair ... I bethink myself: we have not yet had tea. I hope it will be just right this evening.

One by one I take out of their hiding-place the cups with the gold lines, the lovely ones, the only embroidered tea-cloth, the teapot with the golden spout, and the flowers, wan in the night. I set the luxury of these things on the table. With my head shrouded in the light-dark and my shoulders swathed in a fleece of shadow, how good it is to be among them, screened by my movements, not sitting but standing so that I can look upon the happy trio. Him especially. For alongside of him, who hardly speaks, the two Loiseaus, beaming and voluble, seem suddenly tame and stunted.

A pleasant sight, quite new to me, this group of three faces on which a common childhood springs to life, fond joys shared in the past, and names that are no more. They have almost forgotten that a woman is present. This reassures me.

But if he, when he raises his eyes and sees me, is going to remember I am a woman and turn to me too civilly and kindle the usual warfare under the bland honey of the customary phrases! No ... not he ... not this man. He is so frank and so fine with his two friends; what he says is so right, and he speaks so directly, without straining for effect. No, not he.

I offer each of them a trembling cup which they accept without trembling. Then I quickly withdraw again to the protecting shadow where my place is hollowed out, to listen to this amazing presence which my heart scans.

He has spoken to me.

He has spoken to me as never yet a man has spoken: without trying to see or please me, without any ulterior thoughts, just as he speaks to the two Loiseaus, probably just as he speaks to himself when alone. It does happen, then, that from the depths of simple obscurity, unexpectedly, one hears real words, real naked words from a man?

I answer in the same good faith, I no longer feel any fear or the need for self-defence. I feel a delight which helps me. And the perfume of the words that rises from the four of us—it is upon him I bestow it.

From the embers comes a live heat which settles on your cheekbones; your neck unconsciously stretches towards the red point where the conversation, which also crackles and sparkles, rests its centre. This stranger close to me seems like a king leaning over the edge of a fountain; the light carves his smile and courts that familiar brow.... Is he still a stranger?

But suddenly, what time is it? Twenty past eleven! Time to go. Yes, yes, I must go.

At the shock which brings me to my feet the whole group breaks up. They discuss who is to see me home, and I have to refuse three offers at the same time.

Give me your brotherly hands, I want to go home by myself. And you, turn upon me those eyes so different from other men's eyes.

As I go down the stairs the fidgety advice repeated a hundred times, which RÉmy hurls at me over the banisters every Friday, descends upon my head. "Don't walk so fast, look where you're going." The last scraps of warning roll like billiard balls. RÉmy, old friend, have no fear, go in again. I am carrying away an immense wonder. It is hurrying me along in its round. I want to dance, to cry....

RÉmy's voice is cut off abruptly, along with the cone of light in which the steps reeled.

---

On the street ... a narrow, formidable street, full of a palpable, limpid night.

---

Whither goes the volatile sky pursued by the pale flock of clouds? Whither go those grand transports which seize and overwhelm you? Here below there is a man honest in his voice, straightforward in his look, a brotherly man. And I have met him!

VII

For the first time I have spoken about myself to a living being. Not so much in words or details or episodes as in the profound desire to open up the depths of my soul and finally give a true view of it.

To talk of oneself! That enigmatic, incomplete, elusive, warm thing, tossed by conflicting currents, adding to itself constantly, this thing that one is. To say what it is!... To tell of it with modest lips, with lids raised, with voice sure, with silence....

I should never have believed in the possibility of such a boon. And in the first minutes of our being together on Sunday, I still did not know of the possibility.

Two weeks after the Friday at the Loiseaus', I was stamping my feet with the cold in the queue of people waiting at the little door of the theatre to buy the two-franc seats. I happened to turn and was mechanically studying the faces—there he stood eight or nine persons away....

My delighted gaze rested upon him so hard that his head turned compliantly. He saw me, his face lighted up. The crowd was interested, the women stared with their unabashed curiosity, the men joked, but not one of them, you may be sure, was willing to budge. Through the interstices between the hats, our cheeks glowing with the wind, we exchanged greetings, and I divined rather than heard that he wanted to see me. It was at that moment that I felt as if I were flinging myself overboard.

"Next Sunday at my house if you like?"

A strange current was carrying me away. Certain prejudices must be deep-rooted. What was so extraordinary about receiving him in my room? The fact that I took the initiative of inviting him seemed to be trumpeted to the four quarters of the globe; and when his answer came calm and natural, I couldn't continue to face him; I had to hide my burning ears up against the old gentleman in the greatcoat, who fastened his mocking persistent faun's gaze upon me. During the concert I felt by turns as if I had committed a crime and a glorious feat.

"Two o'clock," I had called to him.

I was up early in the morning, and by ten minutes to two everything was ready. The flowers and foliage bought at market had had time to freshen up and expand. The petals of the anemones, shut up like a tight case in the morning, were spreading in a crown around the big pompoms of black pistils. The bed was successfully disguised by a draped covering, and my room, all polished and groomed, shone like a jewel. It looked really homelike. At the last moment I put on my dress of white woollen stuff, the one with the cord girdle and elbow sleeves. The hardest task was the arranging of my hair. Not to look untidy with a fiery mop of a head, yet to be a little beautiful, oh joy, beautiful, to please him. I set-to furiously on the image in the looking-glass.

Five minutes to two. Three little raps, three moments of insensibility, three echoes.

My hand trembled slightly as I held it out to him, and when his gaze travelled over me, an amazing sense of shame seized and chilled me. I promptly hid my arms in my scarf. But my terror was quickly dissipated. He conveyed the lofty ease of people of perfect simplicity. He was there with all his manly gravity, all his attention, and his good smile imparting a sense of security. I felt his calm transfuse itself into me.

We sat down. I no longer know how we began or by what avenue of conversation he came to tell me of his crushed childhood, his needy youth, his mother, his studies, the present career he had chosen for himself.... I listened; I followed him from year to year, from picture to picture, from place to place; and within me a larger and larger void was filling up with hopes and thoughts that seemed to have dwelt there always.

What a flood of sweetness, what warmth and space, and what.... I hardly breathed....

"Your turn...."

He was sitting on my little chair near the window with his back partly to the light. From the depths of the armchair, the white fleece of my scarf looping at my feet, I saw the quality of his gaze.

My story was not so straight and consecutive. Here and there I lost my way and had to stop, with nothing more to say. Nevertheless, insight into me kindled under his eyes, we advanced together as happy and at as even a pace as if we were holding each other's hands; and my flimsy past assumed a little weight.

We spoke of love—you always speak of love when you talk about yourself—but without distinguishing it from ourselves. Who can say what love is? Love is I, it is he. On the day when I shall love, love will be changed and will resemble me and will no longer be that love of which one speaks in general. It will be I—I simply stirred up.

When we were silent under the influence of the slack atmosphere of the room, we two souls at the same pitch, my gaze plunged in the creamy muslin of the curtains, I knew he found me beautiful. I realized I was waiting for him to say so. I would have hugged his words, I should have liked to see them come from his lips without covetousness, I should have wanted them to be nothing but my craving for beauty....

I believe I closed my eyes. A loving alliance took place between my visible body and my hidden being. I was no longer divided against myself. Thanks to him....

How long did we remain that way, grave and smiling, opposite each other? I cannot tell exactly....

The flowers on the table with widespread petals held out their black hearts to us. A gentle pearl-gray breeze was stirring the curtains.

He is gone, is he? His going made no break or clash and left no sense of finality. I had scarcely felt him take my hand when he released it, the doorway was empty. I returned to the empty armchair in the room ennobled by both his absence and his presence, my arms weighed down and my spirits in eclipse....

---

Who is speaking? Who is there?

Mme. NoËl, the live puppet, is sticking her painted head in at the door; the thread of light holds it as in a snare. She here at this moment!... One impatient start and I go over to her. "My compliments, a handsome fellow!" This time it is too much. "Such looks, such eyes! Good for you!" Letting out a chain of cackles, the little floury face retreats under cover, the streak of light narrows, gilds the frame of the door, and dissolves in the shadow.

---

Alone.... But am I still alone?

The cold window-pane refreshes my forehead. The street lounges lazily in its Sunday repose, and the room into which I turn back embraces a fateful, solemn evening; its ripe perfume rises like incense, the flower-decked mantelpiece resembles an altar beneath a cluster of tapers.

I no longer know ... I no longer know ...

VIII

He is often late. I have noticed that I am almost invariably the one to have to wait. Work in his office ends at the same time as mine, but the two places are at a distance from each other, and it always seems a long time before I see him coming.

The first minutes go by unheeded because the seven o'clock outpouring streams by where I post myself on the sidewalk. No signal is given. At a mysterious order and at a given moment a black wave foams and contracts at the exit, and as in greeting to the open light sends up a thousand exclamations, which make one long cry of relief.

This evening it is still light, and the escaping crowd is not inclined to hurry. The sluggishness of the air, the sonorousness, the droning, the motley street ... the crowd condenses and remains coagulated on one spot. Is it ever going to decide to pass on!

When the day's work is over, you come back to the brilliant world marvelling at the holiday sky, and blinking.... Summer is knocking at the window ... it does you good to be standing on your legs expanding your lungs. One group attracts you. They all look like wags, their conversation fascinates; if you were to listen to them, you would remain standing there with your hands in your pockets. But you are being awaited at home, and the circle almost as soon as formed breaks up with casual farewells flung over the shoulder.

When the women hurry along, rain or shine, it is in the subconscious urge to show themselves to everyone. Those who swelled the hubbub a little while ago with jostling elbows and foreheads set like a ram's—"get a move on you!"—are the first to display their pronounced busts and the slowest to walk away with chirps and winged signs and nods and a swaying of sinuous backs.

The street is emptied. Some women still pace up and down the block. They are waiting for someone too.

There he is!

From the busy far-end of the street, across the eddies of people, nothing to tell me it is he but the shape of his hat. Again I feel the security that his appearance always brings.

His tall figure hemmed in by a group detaches itself, grows bigger, and becomes more recognizable step by step. I go to meet him, slowly, smiling despite myself as he hurries, and when our hands touch, my heart breaks into bloom.... An overwhelming instant ... a soft ecstasy ... fusion.... And every evening it is as if I had never found him....

Let us go by the boulevards. The weather is so lovely, we have plenty of time.

Our questions tumble over one another, clear away bothersome trifles, do not even wait for answers, take everything for granted—what happened during the day, all the details, everything, and more than everything.

As a matter of fact, what we listen to is our footsteps. We keep even pace, our tread makes the same sound. A discovery flooding the heart—it is a single step that is carrying us along.

We walk side by side, and the space between us does not divide us. We are followed and preceded by a whole procession of couples moving with a slowness strangely rhythmic which leaves a wake behind.

---

We have told everything, everything we know, and everything we are. It is not a question of being alike in order to be comrades, of springing from the same roots or having drunk from the same source. The thing is, for each to serve the truth which the other lives with the same heart as his own, different truth.

No, it is not a question of being alike. Haven't I observed a hundred times that we are very different? How can one wish it otherwise? How conceive that we whose age is not the same, whose bodies are so different, whose characters are well-defined, and whose careers are opposite should respond to the same influences? Why, each of us responds to the veriest trifles according to his own temperament.... Does he perceive as I do this street, the flower-beds of the big cafÉs, the crowd with glowing eyes, the gritty dust? Is this instant the same instant to him? I know it is not....

A block. How shall we get through? The crossing of the huge thoroughfares, with its din, its black swarming thousands, dashing motors, clanging of bells, tooting of horns, discharges its mechanical eruption upon the city. Let us run. He has slipped his strong arm under mine; we take long joyous strides and finally land in peaceful territory out of breath and radiant.

Here at last is a boulevard where one can breathe, then an old countrified street where silence has nested. We plunge into its tranquillity.

But ... I hadn't noticed—the red rises to my cheeks—his arm is still under my arm, confident, natural. How is it that it never occurred to me that it should always be so?

Shall I dare to tell him how sweet it is to feel him so close to me, our two lives joined, our two souls welded—how necessary it is to me?

---

Feelings depart quickly, and joy too. I can scarcely follow my feelings and my joy. When my heart has slowed down, yes, I will speak to him, I shall feel his breath on my voice, his warmth against my breast. And I shall obey this visible will which comes running to me, springing from the smiling house-fronts, falling from the sky padded with pink.

We are drawing near to my lodgings.

Still this street, where the gracious wind dances for its own pleasure. A few moments, and we shall be leaving each other.

Leaving each other...?

Ah, I know now what to say. I know what the will of a little while ago wanted, and my life and his life. I am going to find the words....

"Listen. I have been thinking. Don't let us part again. Never. It is I who am asking you. Let us live together ... I cannot say anything else, that sums up everything, it is everything, to live together. Is it love?... I don't know yet ... but I know we ought to live together, and you, you know it too."

My voice is thick and has the taste of tears; it scrapes in my dry throat, it won't come out. He takes my two hands, draws me close to him, his gaze caressing my eyes which strain to escape. With his body he supports my rigid, awkward body, which struggles hard to remain upright and does nothing but tremble.

---

The street has disappeared, the sound of the universe, the setting sun which in a golden glory celebrates our sacred betrothal.

From under my closed eyelids I no longer perceive anything but a heavy black pendulum with impetuous strokes, which beats against my breast and henceforth regulates our joint existences....

IX

My family was exultant.

Behold me returned to "proper" life, from which I had so long been absent, by the massive trap-door of marriage.... I took on a value in their reassured eyes, I became a somebody, and in the ardor of the first moment they had the impression that they completely forgave me.

They were exultant. They sent a charming gown to my lodgings and apprised me that a big dinner was being arranged to give my future husband the chance to become acquainted. In spite of my repugnance I was caught in the cog-wheels. The joy of seeing my mother again made me pass over everything indulgently.

It was she who ruined the whole business. Could I not see her disdainful attitude towards a man's poverty, her terrorized submission to the world's judgment? "You know, you are supposed to be coming back from England, we have even given details, don't contradict us...." And the quasi-respect with which she encompassed me because of the authority with which marriage crowns a daughter!

There certainly was enough to frighten one. Their rejoicing smelled of revenge. What stifling quality, I wonder, can marriage have? What oppression, what defeats, what chains await me? Am I going to prison?

But when I turn towards him and bathe my sight in the serene waters of his eyes, I recover my assurance and soar with him again. For them, it is clear, marriage is an irrevocable finality, a tight ring, the oppression of that wild, free instinct which you breathe out with your breath. To us marriage is only a word.

Throughout the dinner time stood still, each second stagnated and told a lie. And something indefinably foul and poisonous rose from their attitude. Sometimes I felt as if I had never quitted this hypocritical spot and this gilded furniture. I held aloof from him in apparent indifference, but really to save our innocent love from their profane eyes.

They left us alone for a moment, and that moment is the one thing in the whole evening of which I retain a clear picture although scarcely a week has passed since then. In saying we were alone I am not quite accurate. A law forbade that young people should be left alone together for a single instant. My sister and her big boy of a fiancÉ were near us; we were not quite sure which couple had been put in custody of the other.

With arms fondly entwined about each other's waists they began to kiss and hug. She held up her lips and uncoiled the serpent of her body tantalizingly. When they were a little tired and their mouths blown, I heard a panting sentence which ended with: "You will love me always?" "Of course, always," he murmured in her ear.

I blushed. Not from offended modesty, but he and I—we had never dreamed of such vows. They seemed silly to me. How can one swear to love forever and say to a man: "Unto all eternity I shall be the most beautiful, the only one in your heart"? Always, forever, words which life at every turn refutes, how is it that a live heart would not give them the lie?

I must have looked a little haggard. My sister turning round saw that we sat apart with a gloomy, distant manner. The same thought was in his mind.

"Aren't they cold for lovers?..." By way of reply to her own question, she kissed her fiancÉ.

X

After fingering the deposit the old pot-bellied concierge livened up. "Money from lovers isn't mere money, it means good luck."

When he came back unexpectedly and with a paternal burr in his voice offered us "a little candle-end to take the measurements with; so often the ladies and gentlemen forget," it was chiefly to surprise us in an embrace, or some laughing dispute interlarded with kisses.

The apartment of three adjoining rooms like three cells in a honeycomb is very nice. It must be bright in summer, the stairs are kept clean, the courtyard is cool and fresh with its green lane of flower-pots. Our windows look right out on the top of the tree. A mighty rare thing, a tree in Paris. Spring mornings we shall be awakened by a fusillade of bird songs.

So this is where we shall live. These rooms, in which the atmosphere seems low and cramped and the floor is all splintered, are to serve us as domain and empire; these walls are to be our horizon.

When I was a child and lay tucked in bed, I used to dream of "being grown up...." Then when I was fifteen I'd say to myself "later on" so as to hear another troubling, forbidden word echo in my ears. And now my confused dreams are come to attend me here.... So here is the end of the story; it is all here, the mirage.

Only yesterday the sole reason for the existence of this place was a jaundiced, weather-beaten sign on the street.... And now our double life has found its temple, chosen its setting, and fixed upon its rallying point.

---

So this is the place we shall call "home." When the rain beats down out of doors and a wrecking wind blows, this will be our unchanging harbor. Whenever we make a new friend and we have told him everything and there are still more things to tell, we shall welcome him across this threshold and within these walls and let him see our ultimate selves. And when the golden May daylight rouses you from bed and sends you running to the window to feel its radiant stroke on your cheek and vague longings take possession of you, it will be the fastenings of this window which will turn to let in the breath of the dawn.

The little dining-room seems somewhat less desolate than the other wan rooms. The ceiling still bears the mark of the hanging-lamp as a sign of where the kindly light came from; a border of red arabesques runs round the top of the walls, and the fireplace of russet imitation marble with its pitted traces from invisible fingers of flame makes you feel as though the grate were still warm.

The kitchen is so tiny and so like a toy that there's not a thing in it, not even an old knife left behind through oversight. In spite of the floor with tiles missing like teeth from a mouth, the sink with dried-up pores, the stove downy with rust, it is the one room that doesn't seem to be crying for help. It needs only a glimmer in the stove and savory smells to give it life.

---

This is the moment to look life in the face—the real life, not the one people talk about. Until now our love has rested merely upon a foundation of clay. It has been facile, scarcely tangible. I perceive it is a love to be.

Now our love must be confronted with its kingdom, must have its boundaries and landmarks fixed, must be asked to shine in truth and be forced to the test. Let our love speak and inspire us. Later, when we shall have furniture around us, like words already spoken, we shall be less at ease.

"If you like, this shall be your room. It suits you. The neutral paper makes it restful for thinking, and the recess is all ready for a couch. Look, it's waiting for you. I will take the other room because of the clothes-closet, and I'll enjoy leaning out across the white window-sill for the fresh air.

"We shall visit each other. We shall be free and easy. You will come and go and receive your friends, do as you please, without ever having to account to me.

"But we are going to suffer, perhaps, in order to remain content and preserve the multitude of joys that one experiences when alone?

"This dividing wall is nothing more, after all, than a thin membrane through which the presence in the next room will ooze. When you are surrounded by your friends in the lively hum and buzz of comradely conversation, they will suddenly notice the shadow of an intruder moving as a woman moves. In the bottom of their hearts they will have us much married, you and me—the marriage of a friend is a little like a theft—and without your suspecting it, at that very moment, in the very midst of their talk, they will leave you.

"Do you really believe we shall be happy? I, for my part, would not like your friends to desert you. It seems unfair that you should be loved the less because of love. Are you quite sure that one has the right to impose one's unalloyed hope upon a person for a lifetime? Are you sure that in the name of love the person one has chosen can remain the best of all persons?... Tell me, are you sure you will not bear me a grudge?

"And can the most beautiful union remain beautiful? For we are about to sign a pact. There's no denying it. What's to be done about this transport that we are, this constant expectation, this clinging intoxication?

"You know we shall have only each other intimately. Even inanimate things will exert a tendency to influence us. When the little lodging will take on our mould and there will be chairs to hold out our habits to us and a brown pulsating clock, creature of even utterance and over-sensitive soul, the fond familiar place will weigh and impose itself upon us.

"So the host of wishes, the magnificent secrets, the kernel of sadness, the nomadic hopes must all be made to enter by this door into our associated days? Tell me, how is one to act? Must happiness, true happiness without law or bridle, also be shut up here, here and nowhere else? And must happiness be the same for the two of us who are different?

"There's a children's fairy tale that once there was a princess whose heavily embroidered robe was by a magic command made to pass through a ring.

"Lovers betrothed think they understand love. But they have not lived together—and every day. They don't know what that means. Those who love as in books do not contemplate a long journey when they set out together, and if the short-lived blaze vanishes at the first turning in the road, it is not a great misfortune. Another spark will do for another kindling. And there are those who renounce, abdicate their own selves, bend the knee, and trust to love.... But how are those to act who are not cut in heroic marble, who do not want to lie or renounce, who don't pity the other one, who are not afraid of themselves, who love as people love in actual life, who are like us? Perhaps you know better than I do. You are a man and older than I am, but I—I ask myself....

"I was ready, as women are, for great impossible things. I never thought about them very clearly, but I felt my emotions pierce me like dagger thrusts. They inspired me with an all-powerful spirit, and if I had had to batter down mountains, or dash through a river of fire, or die in your stead, I should have closed my eyes and done it at one go.

"And behold the test. The test is here. Why is it that the thing one awaits and expects never is the actual test? The actual test has only a sorry way about it, a commonplace aspect, a very reduced compass; it holds nothing but monotonous moments jogging along one after the other; it stops just at the foreshortened shadow at your feet, and my arms which I was about to open are, you see, arms of lead.

"Before I entered these rooms love looked like you and the future shone like a festival just beginning. What is left of all that? I no longer hear the chimes of golden promises ringing in my ears. I no longer feel the hosannas of my heart, and it's as though I scarcely saw you in the gloomy corner where you are standing."

I see the little dwelling where the hesitant evening has not yet taken its place. The silence is laid bare, life is showing us her skeleton; through the mottled panes one sees that the hour has red eyes and the walls confronting us in their inflexible truthfulness have become our four upright witnesses.

I feel like running away.

XI

When everybody was assigned a seat in the carriages, whips cracked and the procession got under way.

The carriage at the head in a splash of sunshine drew the whole line after it, shattering the massive silence of the street. The occupants were still settling themselves, the ladies with a great rustling of silk and a vast deal of twisting and turning before they got themselves comfortably installed, while the men were obliged to sit forward on the edge of the seats and be very careful of the disposition of their legs.

"Lovely weather," said one of the two ladies, "they're lucky." No one answered. They held themselves in abeyance for the usual conviviality to come later, and passed the time looking through the lowered windows at the unknown quarter through which the procession was winding, where the houses sank upon each other and the people in workaday clothes stood still to stare with eyes of envy.

The second carriage had set off at a rapid pace; the coachman was holding in his frisky pair.

"Say what you like, she's a beautiful bride."

Like most very old ladies, this one suggested widowhood. Even in talking she exhaled the attenuated sadness that invests old people with a protective halo.

"Oh, she's just like the rest. What's in her favor is that she's fair. A brunette bride always makes you think of a fly in milk. At least, that's my opinion...."

That was a good start. One remark led to another; the conversation livened up. The ladies in their silk gowns felt conscious of sharing in pomp and an important ceremony.

"I was told she ran away from home last year, with...."

The carriage jolted and zigzagged, but the group sat undisturbed. Each felt drawn to the other three by a decidedly increasing sympathy.

What spirit haunted these carriages? All these people were held by an obsession. They had seen the bride in her starry whiteness and persistently retained an image with a halo round it. The bride was the sole topic.

"I don't approve of a double standard," said another lady. "They did a tremendous amount for her sister's wedding; you know they did, while they're not doing a thing for this poor child." A shrug of the shoulders. "I don't think it's fair."

Everything she said came out with a ripple in it from the unevenness of the paving. Her neighbor was plunged in dreams, unaware. A day triumphal arose out of the distant past when she too walked in white. "Twenty-seven years like one month! How time does fly!"

They warmed up to their subject.

"She is making a very bad match: he hasn't a cent...."

"You forget she's well over twenty-two. A girl has got to take a husband when she finds one. Husbands don't grow in the front-yard."

The perspiration came out in beads on their fleshy foreheads. A stop. What had happened? A block? An accident? Plumed hats were stuck out of carriage doors. "Get in again, madam, you can't see anything. You'll break your aigrette. If I tell you...."

The procession shortened like a snake drawing in its coils.

"Ha, ha! I know someone who will not find it dull to-night!"

Their laughter took on a sharper edge; smiles lurked in the corners of their mouths just deep enough to show that they understood, that they had their own recollections and at the same time were in well-bred company.... This lady with the air of knowing a thing or two.... What?... Without waiting to be importuned, she drew herself up heroically and whispered something over the frilled hat of the little girl beside her. They threw themselves back beaming, stuffed full. "Impossible!"

Boots creaked, gowns rustled. The carriages began to clatter through the streets again.

The laughter of young people. Not very loud. Hiding something sweet and indefinably solemn. She was only fourteen. She had nothing but her thin little feelings, which, however, kept her straight and haughty as an Infanta. By leaning over slightly she succeeded in seeing the bride. The bride ... the white word flitted about her like a light ball.... But straightway she saw the bride her eyes fell. The same emotion had surprised her on Sunday at mass when she saw the host rise in a beam of light, and also when she listened to the hand-organ grind out arias. Ecstasy leapt within her and hope sang: "Me too some day...."

---

The last carriage kept behind; a low coupÉ with drawn shades. A stiffly wired bouquet shed its fragrance within. As it sped rapidly by, heads turned around for a long look and for the sake of the virginal memory it left behind.

---

I was in that last speeding carriage. I had obeyed my mother's entreaties, I had agreed to figure in this masquerade.

So as not to rumple my fairy dress I forced myself not to make a movement but to remain impassive and avoid the least little stir. It was my rÔle to receive the host of looks converging upon me as if levelled at a target, hard and fast, crowding, curious. I confess that beneath my snowy veil and sanctified air I lent myself to the situation with a bit of vanity.

It takes me a long time to undress. My bridal costume is fastened by a thousand hidden snaps and pins. I have trouble in getting out of it.

My room frightens me. "Take possession of us," say the chairs and tables. "Act, command, try your hand, you are in your own home, it is your life which is arising, we are watching you. What are you going to do?"

The more the furniture goads, the heavier the languor that settles upon me, the less I know, the less I advance. In vain I summon to my aid ideas from without; none takes hold. I repeat, for example, that this is the test of both of us, the beginning of our union. I fancy myself clutching at resolutions, but they fall back at my approach and sink routed into the folds of the curtains. Is it really necessary to struggle? Wouldn't it be better to put my head in my hands and drop into the softness and restfulness of my new armchair?

---

When we came here a little while ago, it was he who was the first to experience this sort of trouble. We had been looking over our home and when the tour was ended he took me in his arms, and I felt the warm flesh of his kiss under my chin. A blow seemed to strike my bowels. I tightened up into a ball, my muscles tense, thrown on the defensive. An evil fear made me shiver. He raised his head. I had never seen him look so tragic. His features were hardened, his eyes swimming ... I fell away from him like a flower snapped from its stem.

A sudden instinct sent me to the looking-glass, as if it held an answer to everything. Maybe looking-glasses do offer the eternal answer to the riddle of the universe.

I had said to myself: "You will be close to him, you two will be alone together, perhaps it will be beyond human power to try to be happy." I used to fancy life as a struggle, a piece of work to be done, a masterpiece, and imagined what my acts would be—all voluntary and making for perfection. I forgot that they would have to be performed by these arms with their warm flesh.

I had thought: "He knows me through and through, I have made him read everything." But no, he knows nothing. He does not know the lovely shape of my breasts, the lyre of my hips, the curves of my legs, nor this unknown body the expression of which is so changing that it is like some murmured tale which the light embraces and tells aloud.

It remains for me to bestow a final confidence upon him; that of the body unveiling itself, daring to confess itself. Is this not the purest confidence? But let it not come before its own hour, for it must lead to a moment of truth so naked and so unexpected that it frightens me a little.

It is strange: this evening I live with the whole of my body for the first time. I exist wherever it is. Even as I stand here fixed and tense in front of the glass, I follow a line which may arch, swell and melt away and which already bears the shape of love.

I can imagine everything ... for there's no need of having loved in order to be a lover. All I should have to do, if I dared, would be to twine my arms around his neck, press him hard, and harder still, and the moment would come when I should forget the modesty of my single life.

And without knowing any more one would be lost, distraught, acquiescent, lulled to sleep even to the soul, more beautiful than one is beautiful.

I can go still further, for the flesh that clasps cannot be deceived. When the man and the woman are united, it is the woman subdued, armed with her weakness, who becomes the stronger. I am sure of it already. In the depths of my ignorant flesh, I already feel domination germinating. It is not I; it is a law older than I that is seeking to fulfill itself.

And suddenly I am frightened....

But I am mad.... Man, woman, nothing but two words, which are not of the stuff of life. Is there a single emotion in which I recognize myself? Truth? But it is the truth of others. The truth that reaches you is always different. Isn't it senseless to dread what depends upon yourself? Are we strangers that I should hesitate like this to run to him? Isn't he on the other side of the door, he of whom my body is thinking? Isn't it enough for us to look upon each other? Is there a single question he cannot understand? One seeks happiness. It is all so simple....

Ah, let us go astray every day, let us deceive ourselves, let us suffer alongside our own hearts, let us try to clasp the invisible! But this evening there is nothing but a thin partition between my secret and myself. I feel my heart throbbing as if it were laid bare. I am beautiful, I am alive....

Am I not right?...

---