The picture which I carry away with me seems to lose its colour before my eyes: it is harder and sadder, made up of harsh lights and darker shadows, like an etching. I see the rough hands on the white deal table, the bony faces brutally outlined by a crude light. I hear the cracked voice of the old madwoman, now raised in yells of abuse, now breaking into song ... and Rose ... my beautiful Rose....
But I have stolen this sight of a life which I was never meant to see. The dishonesty of my invisible presence makes a gulf between my actual vision and my perception; and it seems to me that, in this case, I must withhold my judgment even as we hold our breath before a flickering flame.
Chapter I
1
There is in love, in friendship or in the curiosity that drives us towards a fellow-creature a period of ascendency when nothing can quench our enthusiasm. The fire that consumes us must burn itself out; until then, all that we see, all that we discover feeds it and increases it.
We are aware of a blemish, but we do not see it. We know the weakness that to-morrow perhaps will blight our joy, but we do not feel it. We hear the word that ought to deal our hopes a mortal blow; and it does not even touch them!... And our reason, which knows, sees, hears and foresees, remains dumb, as though it delighted in these games which bring into play our heart and our capacity for feeling. Besides, to us women this exercise of the emotions is something so delightful and so salutary that our will has neither the power nor the inclination to check it either in its soberest or its most extravagant manifestations. The influence of the will would always be commonplace and sordid by the side of that generous force which is created by each impulse of the heart or mind.
Upon every person or every idea that arouses our enthusiasm we have just so much to bestow, a definite sum of energy to expend, which seems, like that of our body, to have its own time and season. I have known Rose for hardly three months; her picture is still vernal in my heart; nothing can prevent its colours from being radiant with freshness, radiant with vigour, radiant with sunshine. I shall therefore go away without regret. I see the childishness of all the experiments to which I am subjecting the girl so as to know her a little better. My interest throws such a light upon her that she cannot, do what she will, shrink back into the shade.