OH, MY FRIENDS!
In whom should I confide the secret which made my heart leap?
Could I hesitate when Guillaumin was beside me!
Lively, hearty, and full of go, he was an incomparable companion. He fought as if he had been born to it.... He was in for it, and would stick to it. He had thought it would only be a short business. He realised that it would be a long one. Couldn't be helped! Why grouse about it? He preferred to save his breath. Not for an instant did he dream that we could negotiate for peace as losers. One felt that he would march on patiently counting always on revenge, sooner or later, as long as he had the legs to march on; that he would fight as long as he had the arms to fight with.
How fond I was of him! How worthy he was of my confidence!
I hesitated, all the same, for a long time. It was the effect of my rooted suspicion of my fellow-beings—I swear that I lacked the courage. One day, however, when we were marching—he was talking to me about his sister who was a musician—I made some allusion to Jeannine, also a musician. He looked at me, and I made up my mind to it, I so much wanted him to know. But my tone played me false in the most bizarre manner, cloaking itself in false irony. I seemed to be giving an account of a casual flirtation. What would this unimportant intrigue end in? I pretended to have no idea of it. And the word, the delicious word, which was ready to blossom on my lips, was never pronounced.
Hypocritical trifling! How I cursed it, on looking back at it. How thankful I was to Claude for not adopting the same frivolous tone in his turn. If he had done so, that would have been the end of it. I should have retired within myself, embittered by the idea that I had been misunderstood or, worse still, we should have continued to make meaningless remarks on the subject, which would have done violence to my love. Instead of which Guillaumin guessed that I was, in spite of myself, the victim of an absurd timidity; it was he who, by insensible degrees directed our conversation into a more cordial and sincere channel. He made his interest clear to me. My confidence touched him, he refused to treat it as an insignificant sentiment. Then I took the final step, and knew the sweetness of self-abandonment.
Without a blush, since I was sure that no chaffing threatened me, I was able to describe to him in detail the progress of the sweet seduction right up to the glorious ecstasy. He listened to me unwearyingly, encouraging me by a strange word or nod. The next day he gave me an opening, which I had vaguely desired, to return to my subject. He smiled at me, when my next letters came, and his eyes shone. His friendship performed the miracle of making him happy because I was.