Come. We may return. Press me close to you, if you will, closer still. Don't let us talk.
I know why I am content: your arms, my all-powerful life, our firm footsteps. I do not know why the slight shadow seems to have vanished: to live, go forward, pierce the narrow track of the road with your clear eyes for stars, follow a night one does not see....
And then, O God, in braving the heavens, to understand with love that which transcends love.
X
I hesitate to go out on the street. I feel that people's eyes are drawn to my figure. There's no use fooling myself. The little girls actually point to me with furtive, vinegary glances, for they are more ingenuously hypocritical than women. Their insistent gaze embarrasses me.
Two long months to wait before the first cry of my child! If only I carried nothing beside my child. I feel also an imprisoned love developing which beats at the bars of its cage and chafes so that I don't know how to distract it.
The layette is quite ready; swaddling-bands warm to the touch, chemises like a doll's, caps which will never be of use; the equipment of a marionette; linen as soft as lint, bibs round and puffy as cockades. I have spread everything out in front of me, and each article as it passes through my hands assumes a shadowy lifelikeness.
Two months before I shall really know whether I am to be like other mothers, a brooding hen, with folded wings and in-turned heart, passionate for my own children, cattish and carping in my attitude toward other children. Two months before I shall know the secret force of that wild love which, they say, springs up all at once.
I am being initiated however. The other women give me a hearty welcome; they make the impression of crowding together to make room for me. A real sisterhood? Or the imperceptible joy of seeing a rival temporarily diminished? Under their escort I enter into the forbidden arcana. "What do you feel? I——" They make me a target for their reminiscences.