One alone, in a fiercer glow of enthusiasm and with a doubtless finer sensualism, one alone attempts to offer up her life to a God! The glorious folly of her! How I love to see her, vainly tormenting her beauty, seeking infinity, aspiring to bear peace across the world. I see her soul like a walled garden in which all the flowers lift themselves higher and higher, struggling to offer themselves to a moment of light. But, in a day of greater discontent and in an hour of maturity, the illusory fence will fall and the fair life will stand in open space. Then, drunk with boundless earth and boundless sky, the woman, restored to nature, will doubtless find herself more attuned to pleasure than were the others and more responsive to joy.
I looked at all those bowed heads, dark or fair, dusky or golden, those lovely forms revealed by their clinging robes, those delicate profiles bent over the portraits and writings of their sisters, far-off friends, vanished, unknown or absent, whose power of love still lives for all men and for all time ... immortal tears, petals dropped from the flower.
Then my glistening eyes turned towards my Roseline. She was there, indifferent, unmoved, perhaps secretly bored.
And my thoughts wept in my heart.
The most beautiful things cannot be given.
Chapter X
1
I had been out of town for a time. Returning to Paris a day sooner than I intended, I wished to give Rose the pleasure of an unexpected arrival and I went to see her that same evening. Though it was not more than ten o'clock, the lights were already out in the strictly-managed boarding-house. There was a row of brass candlesticks on the hall-table. The man-servant wanted to give me one; but I was impatient, thanked him hurriedly and ran upstairs in the dark.