In the time it takes to walk only a few feet you can undergo the acutest agony. I held my breath and for a second time felt death strike me with its thunderbolt. I had time to become a widow too.
She advanced terribly: it was death advancing along the sidewalk. I felt I must detain and implore her. With jaws set I restrained a great convulsive outcry and flung myself in her way.... My lips gave a sort of cluck.... She fixed her eyes straight ahead and turned away deliberately as if from a drunken beggar.
I looked and looked after her....
She departs—forever—her skirt grazing the ground. Her veil carries away the remnant of my joy, leaving me there stupefied and convulsed, alone under the sun. She departs....
My God!...
XI
My son is growing up.
He has reddish-brown ringlets, his cheeks are vermilion, the blue of his eyes radiates seraphic calm. He is probably going to be very handsome. Often people stop me on the street to tell me how lovely he is, and for a moment I feel some pride.
He is beginning to show human traits; he talks, he expresses a desire to touch and possess things, and likes to listen to stories, which used to make no appeal: "And then, Mamma? Tell me, what next?..." I always begin by kissing him.