"From that place I have seen many other autumnal fêtes, but have never been affected by so much dying beauty. On the contrary, I felt a cruel pleasure in crushing those heaps of fallen leaves destined so soon to decay. I was younger and Youth concealed death from me, perhaps love as well.
"I felt those forebodings of finality like a wound. I felt myself unsatisfied and filled with desire. It seemed to me that on my return my restlessness was visible on my face. But those who are near us never perceive the inner dramas which we are living. How should she guess? Last evening I was telling the ancient adventures of Pygmalion to Marie Louise, who always asks for stories, and who obliges me to steal from legends and mythology; as I proceeded, I met myself in my story. I, too, have asked love to awaken my Galatea, but Galatea has remained as immovable as a goddess of stone. Have I not resigned myself to it, and is she not the ornament of my home? Have I not resolved to look elsewhere for those emotions so necessary to strong natures, and which nature, art, thought—and the entire course of the human stream have offered us? Passion means to live violently, and this power belongs only to love.
"And love, in ordinary life, cannot last. Or rather, one must cultivate it like a garden, instead of leaving it for each day, going, to carry away a fragment of it. To admit its decline, its slow diminution, the alteration of its quality, is worse perhaps than to lose it at once. The physical tie lasts the longest, with the laxity, the humiliations it imposes. But the intelligence, as well, remains subdued for a long time. Tired out, it can no longer defend itself. Shall I refuse to admit to myself this sham, these miseries and failings which, in spite of my work, plans, ambitions, hopes, and even this book itself, make me express my inmost thoughts, when I know I shall be neither followed nor understood? Parody of an intimacy which no longer exists, and whose outward appearances are preserved! Should I not at least use my reserve energy to protect my conscience?...
"When I got back, surprised at my late return, she inquired laughingly:
"'Can you see in the darkness like a cat?'
"Her laugh was pretty and fresh, the laugh of a young girl. She was really uneasy and I knew it. My material comfort is preoccupying her thoughts much more than it should. Why does she not take keener interest in our harmony, which she does not suspect is at the breaking point?
"In the evening, as conversation lagged, which happens frequently since my mother's departure, she asked me:
"'When are we going back to Paris?'
"'When you like,' I replied.
"I usually try to prolong our stay far into the season, the peace of which is so favorable to my work. But in Paris, in this whirl which gives the impression of activity, in the external movement that distracts us and takes us out of ourselves, the hidden breach in our lives will be less evident and the coming of Autumn passes unnoticed...."