I stopped. For a moment I left my work....
Where find the ultimate words of love, the final words—simple and difficult—when one does not even know the word to make one poor inferior Marie blossom out?
II
When I am old I shall warm myself at the rich shining vision of the first days of my love. I shall hold out the dry sticks of my arms. I shall beg for a little fire, a little sap. I shall return to the present with feebly beating heart and faltering step.
Poor withered old woman, you do not remember; and others will bestow upon you the charity of showing you a picture of lovers. You see us as we, wife and husband, used to embrace, how I leapt to his side, how his mouth clung to the fruits of my cheeks, and how we laughed a matchless laughter. Well, that is enough for you, return to your winter, to the virgin plain of your old age, to your years perched precipitously over death.
Am I the first by any chance to hide the truth from you?
The truth of to-day has no brilliance or halo. My joy in being a young bride is not at all what I used to fancy it would be.
The dominant motive of my life at present, its great preoccupation, is by no means to invent new words of love. It is to give battle to the existence that one buys—buys with pennies and infinite pains.
We are poor. As we each earn our own living, we have decided that I shall manage the budget for both. It is my job to concoct the meals; and they must be wholesome, pleasing to the eye, intelligently planned, tasty. The house must be bright, beautiful, convenient, cozy, stamped with an air of prosperity. Time has to be economized, a ceaseless tyranny must be exercised over things, nothing may be neglected, order must be adhered to slavishly, hygienic principles followed vigilantly. And lastly, all these things, which are everything, must be accomplished successfully, and so successfully that once caught and conquered they will come easily.
If only I had the money with which to fare forth to battle, it might be easy, but the sum at my disposal is about enough for a doll's budget. You could hold it on the tip of a knife; it is inexorably minute.