And then—there!—her laugh with a little savagery in it. She notices that I am expecting a baby. "Well, of all things!" She throws her gloves into the air, seats herself, gets up again, and from her hectic restlessness I infer that she feels defrauded. My home is too cozy and my manner too tranquil. Not, of course, that she wants to find me in misfortune, but it's as though I have passed over into an enemy's camp.
She has come because she is in trouble. I do my best. I hold her hands in mine and try to trace the ravages of grief on her faun face because she keeps saying: "I'm so miserable." She must be suffering. But I cannot get myself to be moved.
This is her story. Her lover has betrayed her, she is sure of it. In tidying his drawers she found letters from a woman referring to a recent rendezvous. She thought she'd die when she read them.... Still I am unmoved. She warms up to her theme. At breakfast, then and there, a terrible scene; they fly at each other.... Disgust seizes me.... To show my interest and stimulate my pity, I ask some questions. "So you had an explanation and could come to an understanding?" She snatches her hands away and draws back. "Aren't you listening?"
To come to an understanding! That would be too easy. They rushed at each other at the first pretext, each resorting to shifts and dodges and keeping silent as to the real issue, though recognizing the other's grievance. "He beat me."
She closes her beautiful victimized eyes. She has displayed the seven wounds of her heart; and the least she expects is the shelter of my breast and the succor of my arms....
"But it would be so simple to tell each other the truth and try to understand each other...."
She keeps her flexible panther-like body from bounding up. "The truth! what truth? Do you think love is so simple? He has deceived me. That's the only truth I need to know." She gives herself up to tears, and her clear eyes turn into two bloodshot orbs.
Should I tell her that I am insensible to such despair, and her love is merely a mistake proceeding from books, it really isn't love? Should I tell her that love is logical and simple at bottom, and is less in its transports than in the gentleness it conveys? Should I tell her that men like change more than women and for a man to snatch at a passing temptation does not mean that he is trying to reach the love he prefers? Should I?
She anticipates me. "I understand, I understand, you are not in love. Poor little thing, you'll see when you love!" She sends her prophetic look around the orderly room and the, to her, inconceivable quiet. What polite excuse can she find for getting away quickly? She came a long way to meet a real sister in love. We ought to have groaned together over the common enemy who is also the common God; then she would have departed in her honorable failure aided and reinforced for the eternal contest.
Shall I let her leave like this? I have been able to secure a serenity which she does not surmise; it would be a charity to beg her to try to secure the same serenity. This woman ... I shall say to her: "A beloved is neither a God nor an enemy, he is a friend you must discover in spite of passion. I know it's hard and needs an iron will and devotion, but I swear one succeeds...."