I was in that last speeding carriage. I had obeyed my mother's entreaties, I had agreed to figure in this masquerade.
So as not to rumple my fairy dress I forced myself not to make a movement but to remain impassive and avoid the least little stir. It was my rôle to receive the host of looks converging upon me as if levelled at a target, hard and fast, crowding, curious. I confess that beneath my snowy veil and sanctified air I lent myself to the situation with a bit of vanity.
It takes me a long time to undress. My bridal costume is fastened by a thousand hidden snaps and pins. I have trouble in getting out of it.
My room frightens me. "Take possession of us," say the chairs and tables. "Act, command, try your hand, you are in your own home, it is your life which is arising, we are watching you. What are you going to do?"
The more the furniture goads, the heavier the languor that settles upon me, the less I know, the less I advance. In vain I summon to my aid ideas from without; none takes hold. I repeat, for example, that this is the test of both of us, the beginning of our union. I fancy myself clutching at resolutions, but they fall back at my approach and sink routed into the folds of the curtains. Is it really necessary to struggle? Wouldn't it be better to put my head in my hands and drop into the softness and restfulness of my new armchair?
When we came here a little while ago, it was he who was the first to experience this sort of trouble. We had been looking over our home and when the tour was ended he took me in his arms, and I felt the warm flesh of his kiss under my chin. A blow seemed to strike my bowels. I tightened up into a ball, my muscles tense, thrown on the defensive. An evil fear made me shiver. He raised his head. I had never seen him look so tragic. His features were hardened, his eyes swimming ... I fell away from him like a flower snapped from its stem.
A sudden instinct sent me to the looking-glass, as if it held an answer to everything. Maybe looking-glasses do offer the eternal answer to the riddle of the universe.
I had said to myself: "You will be close to him, you two will be alone together, perhaps it will be beyond human power to try to be happy." I used to fancy life as a struggle, a piece of work to be done, a masterpiece, and imagined what my acts would be—all voluntary and making for perfection. I forgot that they would have to be performed by these arms with their warm flesh.