Why not have the courage to look crude reality crudely in the face? There are no people who are inseparable, there are no couples who are inseparable.
He is in the trenches, the men are in the trenches, engulfed in misery, exposed to danger, plagued by vermin, and I am here alive and untouched, grazing this large wall patched with three-colored placards. "Women ... your noble rôle ... noble work ... honor...."
Honor? What honor? I work. Isn't that natural? He is suffering, he is going to die. Didn't I see my own dormant energies wake up? And if he has given all, have I not taken all?
Five minutes to nine! I hurry, raising my coat collar in a shiver and clasping my hands inside my soft muff.
At the end of the street a dusty gust driving a handful of people along like dead leaves, women with billowing skirts, a tramping, whistling gang of blue-lipped street boys, and old Noël with his breath frozen on his beard.
They have left. Even if they return, they have left. That's the whole thing. There will have been a space of time when they were wiped off the face of the earth, and life went forward without them, was lived without them, and women actually continued without them....
IV
The typical young lover, well built, good-looking enough but without charm; his youthfulness armed with a timid pretentiousness. I had always avoided talking to him, but this evening he got hold of a foolish excuse for walking home with me. I tried hard to speak of something else and quickly switched the conversation on to another track when it took a certain turn, while he, a hundred times more proficient than I, certainly more obstinate, dragged the subject back to where he wanted it to be.
The eternal comedy of man. The same words—who will tell them that they always use the same words?—to reach the same goal. He made awkward, crafty attempts, watching me out of the corner of his eye, and when he saw I was escaping, he declared himself, throwing up his dice and staking his very heart. His voice was rusty, his nose pointed downward, his ears were fiery.