Oh, white pathway of innocence which knows no return! Oh, tenuous light of purity which, once quenched, kindles no more! Did I not grieve and mourn for you when I lost you before my twentieth year? Sadly, enviously, like some poor exile, I saw other girls of my age passing in blithe security by the side of their mothers, blushing at an eager word or at a daring glance. Alas! I felt that I was unworthy to kiss the hem of their skirts.
But bliss was to be vouchsafed to me. Redeeming and triumphant there came to me at last the Angel of Maternity. With proud humility I bore the little human flower fluttering in my breast. At every throb of life I felt myself swooning with joy—with the ineffable joy of my reconquered purity.
My mother was with me, and in the tender haven of her arms I found shelter for my meek and boundless ecstasy.
How is it possible, I asked myself, that there are women who dread this perfect happiness, who weep and suffer through these months fraught with rapturous two-fold life?
For me, I felt like a flowering plant in springtime, impelled by some potent influence towards its perfect blossoming. The whole of that blissful period seemed a sublime ascent to unalloyed felicity; everything enchanted me, from the awed and tremulous waiting to the final crowning consummation.
When at last the fragile infant—my son!—lay in my arms, he seemed to me sufficient to fill my entire life. I nursed him into ever-growing wonder and beauty. Day by day he seemed fairer, more entrancing, like a delicate flower in some fantastic lunar legend.
Oh, the wee groping hands against my face! The wilful little caprices, the cries like those of an angry dove! And the dimples on the elbows; the droll battle with the little cap always awry, and the joyous impatience of the tiny kicking feet!
Each day my mother and I invented new names for him—names of little flowers, names of little animals, nonsense-names made up of sweet senseless sounds.
I had no thought, I had no desire. Pale and pure I sat enthroned in the milk-white paradise of maternity.