I had thought: "He knows me through and through, I have made him read everything." But no, he knows nothing. He does not know the lovely shape of my breasts, the lyre of my hips, the curves of my legs, nor this unknown body the expression of which is so changing that it is like some murmured tale which the light embraces and tells aloud.
It remains for me to bestow a final confidence upon him; that of the body unveiling itself, daring to confess itself. Is this not the purest confidence? But let it not come before its own hour, for it must lead to a moment of truth so naked and so unexpected that it frightens me a little.
It is strange: this evening I live with the whole of my body for the first time. I exist wherever it is. Even as I stand here fixed and tense in front of the glass, I follow a line which may arch, swell and melt away and which already bears the shape of love.
I can imagine everything ... for there's no need of having loved in order to be a lover. All I should have to do, if I dared, would be to twine my arms around his neck, press him hard, and harder still, and the moment would come when I should forget the modesty of my single life.
And without knowing any more one would be lost, distraught, acquiescent, lulled to sleep even to the soul, more beautiful than one is beautiful.
I can go still further, for the flesh that clasps cannot be deceived. When the man and the woman are united, it is the woman subdued, armed with her weakness, who becomes the stronger. I am sure of it already. In the depths of my ignorant flesh, I already feel domination germinating. It is not I; it is a law older than I that is seeking to fulfill itself.
And suddenly I am frightened....
But I am mad.... Man, woman, nothing but two words, which are not of the stuff of life. Is there a single emotion in which I recognize myself? Truth? But it is the truth of others. The truth that reaches you is always different. Isn't it senseless to dread what depends upon yourself? Are we strangers that I should hesitate like this to run to him? Isn't he on the other side of the door, he of whom my body is thinking? Isn't it enough for us to look upon each other? Is there a single question he cannot understand? One seeks happiness. It is all so simple....
Ah, let us go astray every day, let us deceive ourselves, let us suffer alongside our own hearts, let us try to clasp the invisible! But this evening there is nothing but a thin partition between my secret and myself. I feel my heart throbbing as if it were laid bare. I am beautiful, I am alive....
Am I not right?...