5
"Paris,... 19—
"Dearest, it is evening; it is cold and wet out of doors; but peace and gaiety shed their radiance in the great drawing-room which you will soon know, white and bare as a convent-parlour, living and bright as joy itself. Chance gave me to-day a long day of solitude, like those at Sainte-Colombe. And yet the hours passed before me and I could not make them fruitful. When such favours come to me in the midst of excitement, I am too glad of them to be able to profit by them; I can but feel them; and they control me without leaving me time to control them in my turn. I listen to my life, I contemplate it. It has too many opposing voices, too many absolutely different shapes; my consciousness is lost in it as a precious stone is swallowed up by the sea. I blush at such chaos. My soul appears to me only fit to compare with one of those wretched table-cloths which country dressmakers patch together, at the end of the year, out of the thousand scraps of the thousand different materials which they have cut during the season. But is not this the natural result of the diversity of our feminine souls?
"Antagonistic elements have long been at war in me; and the violence of their blows has sometimes torn my life asunder. I no longer have cause to complain of it now, because time and love have helped me to reconcile them. Our powers are injurious to us so long as we do not know how to use them. I have suffered, I still suffer from my creeping knowledge. I would like to increase the pace of yours. Is it impossible?
"And so I dreamed all day and, of course, I dreamed of you, the Rose whom I am always picturing. I imagined that we had arranged to see each other this evening. You walked into the drawing-room, drenched with the rain, pink-cheeked with the cold. You looked very pretty, in a frock that suited your face and your figure. You knew how to hold yourself! You knew how to walk! Your movements were graceful! After talking for a little while by the fire, we both sat down at the table, under the lamp-light, and there began our usual work. What work it was I cannot tell; but it will be easy for us to choose: we have everything to learn; and I feel that both our minds must follow the same path for some time to come. By placing the same objects before them, we shall succeed in discovering what you really feel and what you really wish. That is the only way of delivering your mind from my involuntary dominion and of distinguishing your image from mine. I have no other ideal than to feel myself actually moving, even though the movement be an inconsistent one. How could I invite you to a similarity which is nothing but a perpetual dissimilarity?
"You must cease to be an echo. I shall map out no course for you; and we do not know what will become of you. Let us first walk at random. The goal is not always visible; but very often the road travelled tells us which road to take next. It matters little what work we do, provided that it gives a sort of tone to our meetings and that it regulates our hours. The freaks of chance and the youthfulness of our minds will always furnish colour and fancy in plenty....
"Understand me, Roseline: it is not a friend that I am seeking, not one of those uncertain, light-hearted, capricious relations which encumber life without adding to it. I am dreaming like a child, of a woman who should realise the greatest possible amount of beauty in her mind and person and who should add her strength to mine in the service of the same ideals. Rose, are you that woman? Will you help me to deliver other women still who are oppressed by circumstances or people, to deliver those who are shackled by prejudice or fear, to deliver the beauty that is unable to show itself and the will that dares not act? To deliver! What a magic word! Rose, does it ring in your heart as it rings in mine?...
"But, as you see, my dreams are carrying me too far; and I blush at my audacity. When I look at you and judge myself, it often seems to me that what I have done for you is only a form of vanity, that all my generous aspirations are but vanity!... Is it true?
"And, if it were! Is it not still greater and more foolish vanity to require that all our actions should spring from pure and sublime motives? If, in contributing to your development, I am conscious that I am assisting my own, will yours be any the less complete for that? If I no longer know which is dearer, you, who represent my dreams, or my dreams, which have become embodied in yourself, will you on that account be less fondly and less nobly loved?
"And, if it be true that vanity there is, is the vanity vain that sheds happiness and joy?"