I was not more beautiful than other women, but I wanted to be. In spite of me and in spite of themselves, the men hovered about me, lavish of their glances. I moved like a ray of joy, life was a festival redder than war; I expressed myself without saying a word, all hearts were ready, they gave me more love than I asked for and almost as much as I needed.
That was the air I breathed and had to breathe. Is it good, is it bad? It is an instinct which keeps turning rapidly round and round in you. If you were to pull it up, it would sprout again.
Then how can it be that some day, though I shall have done nothing to bring it on, the territory of this indestructible instinct will be clouded over and made barren forever after? How can it be that I shall no longer please if I still want to please?
The rain is beating upon the streaked window-pane and glides down against my cheeks in long transparent tears. Every chink in the room is an inlet for the wind. Around me there is a wailing as if drawn from a sad, dreary bowstring.
Is it the woman of the mirror? Is it the woman that I am? You can't tell which woman is speaking to the other woman....
"So you're of the sort to let yourself be disheartened?
"You thought you had said all the good-byes there are to say in life. There is one left, even more awful than the others. You have dragged yourself over mouldering graves, yet when you arose you found something to keep you alive. But as yet you are unworthy of this last good-bye: To survive it, you need a grandeur you don't possess, a more solid strength than the furtive power you're proud of. You believed you were pure, and you were quite sure you lived in your entirety. Look!..."
How ashamed I am, O God. What a stranger the woman opposite me is....