I
I had been counting the days until I could call the day I was yearning for by its name, a name new to me every morning. To have said good-bye for two months, to have lived apart so long and almost without news, and now finally to be able to caress the ardent moment which gives each back to the other, if only for a short space; to caress it as you hold your hands up to the fire. By a great effort I succeeded in remaining calm.
I had put my house in order, filled my vases with flowers, and made myself beautiful. My velvet gown dulled the light, so that by contrast I seemed to have a halo round my bared neck.
The hour drew near. The clock struck. But, no, the clock must be fast.... The next moments stabbed the silence, dragging on leaden feet. I went to the window. On turning back into the room, I was delighted to discover a few things to do. The little round corner table was standing tipped, there were too many leaves in the bouquet ... and this wisp of hair straggling down my cheek. No, he was not coming. Waiting is a death died over and over again.
At last....
To think I could have breathed till now! You! He moved toward me rather timidly, almost as if he were a stranger. It occurred to me that he was not familiar with my home. A panic seized me: he might not like it.
But in one bound I was close to him, my head on his shoulder and his arms around me. I forgot everything. "I am so happy, so happy." We found ourselves in my little room, where the flowers piercing the twilight opened wide their mock hearts....
But how he had changed; his face had grown thinner.... Why that overcast brow, that look of depression, that manner of not being at home?... What was the matter with him?... What was the matter with him?
Though there had been no time for conversation, and we had merely exchanged awkward, random questions, I felt suddenly that our hearts had ceased to beat in unison.
He should speak. I must know! Nothing is worse than not knowing....
"I'll tell you," he began, resting his head on his hands. He had suffered too much by our separation; he had realized this forcibly again just now when he entered my home where everything dispossessed him; he could no longer live without me, so far away; he needed me all the time, every minute. Oh, he knew there was something irrational in his entreaty, but all he had was plain common sense. "Listen to me," he said, "there's an instinct, an instinct stronger ... but you don't understand ... there ... I've told you everything ... that's all."
He began again. His expostulations breathed an awful storm; while an icy clearness and a terrible calm rose in me. Fear crept into me down to the very marrow of my bones. What could I say to a man who suddenly talked another language? All I had was the words we used to....
"Answer me, I beg of you, answer me, even if it is no, but answer me...."
Did I have to begin all over again—give everything and explain everything all over again? Until then I had been carried along on the sustaining bosom of a powerful stream. Now a torrent furiously discharged its troubled waters and infernal foam into the even flow, and I had to fight my way back up against the current in a desperate life-and-death struggle.
So it seems that the bonds of flesh make mock of you; instead of uniting, they detach, leaving each of you to wrestle and paralyze the other's limbs like entangling undergrowth.
And does it seem that the bonds of the spirit are not strong enough because they always lack some link or word or look?
If it were not that I had found complete harmony with another human being, I should have doubted whether a man and a woman could ever love, that is, ever understand each other.
The thought inspired me with supreme strength. A hot wave kissed my mouth and ears; I pushed him away.
His wife. She was the first consideration. Remembering her gentleness, I spoke of her gently.
To be with me he could give up twenty years of his life in common, twenty years of attentions and indulgences, twenty deeply rooted years. She was a frail loving woman who had once been beautiful; she was nearly forty, which in a woman is to have no age.... Wouldn't my presence, consequently, result in hurting another woman?... And would I do such a thing, I who brought so much warmth of feeling and enthusiasm to what was beautiful, right, and high-spirited?
"In loving you I wanted everything about you to be brighter, easier and more perfect; and just when I rapturously believed I had succeeded, you come and brusquely ask me to remove the light from another being. That's what you are really asking me to do.
"More. The man in whose name I built my house—don't be afraid it's his suffering I dread; I love him enough to rise above pity. But I thought I told you that he is necessary to my effulgence; you understand, necessary.... Remember, he is the one to whom I told the truth, in whose presence I could live while at the same time holding your presence, who has suffered through me without loving me the less, and prefers my happiness to his own heart's happiness. That's the sort of man he is. That sort of man exists. And you would deprive me of him!
"But if, to get me away from him, you were to offer something superior, a more perfect means of elevating me and teaching me to know, I should go unafraid, perhaps without hesitating. Love is the thing that elevates life.... But you, what do you offer? Feeling, instinct. Instinct is not a reason...."
I had risen while speaking. My cheeks and forehead were burning. His face, plunged in the snowy curtain, was quite changed. Was it the look in his eyes or the folds around his mouth?
"Then you don't love me?..." He repeated this like a child taken with the words, and dropped his head in his hands.
That the light fell about me in gray veils may have been only a fleeting phenomenon. It cannot be that love will desert you suddenly.
The rest of his stay was of no avail, and when awkwardness fell between us, he rose, pressed his hands down on my shoulders, and gave me a long, sombre stare. Then he left. I heard the door close slowly.
Then he doesn't understand? But the love I feel for him is a true love. It is not that unstable impulse which passion carries off in a puff of wind. My love, like my life, craves all the victories I have gained, all the people who are dear to me. And my eyes take in whatever they can of sky and color.... Nothing forbids me to breathe. Why am I forbidden to love whatever I love?
My love, you will conquer, you will make yourself understood. You are not this man who is leaving, nor the other man, nor anyone; you are a heart of flesh exposed ... a restless heart without limit, a heart forever beating and forever aimless. Do not let a single one who has ever been with you fade and drop away. If love cannot conquer, what else is there to resort to?
And I ran out to overtake him.