Love proclaims its law. You must show your love, it cries.
Somewhere in the world to-night there are faces lying dormant for me, persons to whom I have things to say. I am waiting for them, I stretch my arms out to them, I know they will come because of my need for embraces, a desire for caresses, so strong to-night that I jump up with a start. It is as if half of my body were missing. I see myself deserted and frightfully widowed, and my mouth quivers with hunger and thirst for another mouth.
I know a man is on the way. I shall recognize him. I shall have the somewhat bitter audacity you must have in order to confess yourself the immense thing you are. I shall stir him, I shall do everything; you can go the full lengths of the sublime that dwells within you.
As soon as he will rise above the horizon he will realize from my mere expression that I have long lost the trick of lying.
And when I read the first glance he gives me, when desire bewilders him a little and forces him back within himself, I shall be happy to be beautiful. Beneath his eyes my sound healthy self will brace up again, my inexhaustible twenty-seven years, my rounded limbs, everything which goes slightly to pieces when love is absent. Here is the offering, blond, slim, laughing, which I already present to you.... He will perceive uncomprehendingly that if I am a little more beautiful than myself, it is because by virtue of loving one comes to resemble the love one feels.
When he will have looked at me long, I will explain what each of my features means; I will speak. Because silence is beautiful after the last words, and it is the woman who has the most to say.
I may have a stronger expression than other women, perhaps a slightly more taciturn expression, too. My solitude would account for this. Women are not sufficiently alive to the fact that one should live alone, depart alone, and return alone, and that there is no one outside one's self. No one. In going to meet love again, I who have been twice widowed and have my child to make me feel more isolated, shall find nothing but another solitude. To be sure, there will be kisses, meetings, a symphony of voices. Yet in spite of everything to know you're alone, all the time....
All the time....
If I had reached this secure kingdom through my own power I should be very proud. But I don't deserve the credit. My dead lovers gave me this awful superhuman gift. For there comes a moment when you have taken from some one else everything there was to be taken. Without his noticing he becomes useless, he must disappear. Who resigns himself to this?
My lovers bestowed upon me the love I was capable of, attentive and complete, they bestowed upon me the intelligence of my blood, my tears and my words.... And then they gave me up. They performed this supreme deed.