Not immediately. Let us prolong this great sombre moment. Let us stay here where even time might come to a standstill. The trees droop lower here, and in these tranquil meadows the spirit may play hide-and-seek.
It is really unhappiness that makes you stop. I return from the night; all I bring back is this strangled throat, a body like a tortoise-shell covering a silent heart and blinded eyes.
If I emerge from myself, disconsolateness everywhere, spread all over the world. The sleeping desert....
He is close beside me, but since he lives, he can do nothing for me. I can do nothing for him. I used to think that in loving him I crowned him. Love is not enough. This evening I saw his life rise from the ground, distinct from love, outside of mine; I saw his life, bared to all the winds, isolated from everything, raise and satisfy itself. I see that this is right.
His life is complete in itself, unique and important; his life is not merely the image that inspires me, the voice that I evoke, the face I love dearly. His life is an insuperable force, vivid, inviolable and free, which my heart out of sheer love of him failed to recognize. I was right a few minutes ago to want to blot myself out, because I ought not to count. Beyond my limited, restricted presence, he has the whole of infinity to breathe in.
Then where are the nights which are to enlighten me? Of him I know nothing but my love, nothing except that by his very existence he contradicts what I know of him. Who will tell me how far I must go and to what I must attain? I have slept in his arms, I have lived side by side with all his cares, and I have given myself up to him with a joy like unto which there is nothing. All I have given is myself. And yet more is necessary.
And a great conviction rises up straight and strong and shines as if a light had sprung from the midst of the meadows.
I am only a woman, I can think only spasmodically. I love as one weeps, but there comes a day of which this is the night, on which your forehead touches the profound truth. You feel the loving-kindness of your heart aroused, and you oddly understand that the perfect union of man and woman has never been part of the natural scheme of things, and in order to be happy together it is not enough to love one another.