I close them—to shut out for a while the dazzle of the water in the indigo basin, the thousand golden bubbles in its centre, the thousand silver teeth biting at its edge. I don't want to think any more. All I want to feel are the warm darts which pierce my hands resting on the grass and the peculiar sense of well-being which takes the place of everything else....
Have I really slept?... Sweetness, the sweetness of lips kissed by breezes, a sweetness complete and overwhelming ... a delicious life.
But ... this black gown ... my dead ... I have nothing but my grief, nothing but my grief. What wrong have I perpetrated that my grief should forever sing in my ears?
Ah, just to forget.... Everywhere the earth breathing happiness, the blue, blue rolling waves, the almond trees veiled in faery whiteness, everywhere the nuptials of joy.
Grief, where are you? Everywhere space terribly alive, with hope in every color and death just died for the last time.
XIII
It happened as it does in novels. The man suddenly feels the beast of prey panting within him and yields to it hotly; the woman writhes under the fiery coercion and gropingly reassumes the ancient ways that have come down from time immemorial....
Even to the words I used. Where did they come from, the words that cut him like a lash, whipped up his desire, and then fell on his face like drops of ice water?
I was ashamed. I straightened my hair and left the room. How was it nothing warned me that I must be on my guard against the man alongside of whom I had been working daily? Had I been blind? I tried to extract something significant from my recollections ... but no....
I am going to leave him soon, and I must speak to him.