I wanted to run away, I wanted to look, I wanted.... I tell you my heart was leaping from between my ribs, so that you could have taken it in your hand.
How many years are there left?... Ten years?... Eight years?... Perhaps only six in which to continue to be the very same woman I am.
A day will come immersed in the other days, similar to the other days, when this woman will be dead while I shall live.
I try to question space. I turn in every direction. The storm has increased. The rain is coming down in sheets and rebounding in mist. The polished pavements are cracked by quivering little ripples. The tempest drives the people ahead like leaves.
Whence this dread which blows like a typhoon from the future, breathing on my youth and freezing my blood? Whence these two words which gnaw at my breast like a canker? Six years....
No, no, it is impossible. I believe in the deluge, in the thunder, in misfortune, in oblivion. Not in that. Why should this face of mine with its curves, its marble purity and its color change? Why? I have always had a fair amount of courage, I have always done what I had to do, but this renunciation, this hideous acquiescence. I haven't got the courage for that, no, I haven't.
I am prepared to accept death. If necessary, I will stretch my hands out to it. Let the one moment of my life which wipes out the other moments flow into nothingness. Take, strike, I am prepared....
But that "six years, no more," should be written on my face, that people should see my face and I should hold it up smilingly like a ruthless gift to those I love, that I should bear the signs upon me of dull decay, wrinkles, falling hair, withered cheeks, and dimmed eyes.... What if I refuse?...
I could no longer bear to look into the mirror and see what was going to be. I held my face to the pane on which a dismal music was drumming.
I have had deep feelings as plentiful and coming as thick and fast as these drops of rain; some feelings have been vaster than the soul itself; but the only feeling truly like woman, the only feeling essentially woman, which weds her soul while wedding her body, is the immense desire to be beautiful. I have lived through my love of others, I love my child as though I were still carrying it, yet all the time, from waking up in the morning until going to bed at night, year in and year out, from as far back as I can remember, I was cloaked and upheld by a will to please.