Chapter III: Book I: Being Born (2)

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. Remy, the great big patient Remy, 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!

Remy 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. Remy 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. Remy 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 Remy 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. Remy, 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....

Remy'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. Noel, 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 cafes, 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 fiance 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 fiance.

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 coupe 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 role 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?...