She rose and went towards the door, but to reach it she had to pass close to the open window; she decided that, once there, she would fling herself out! . . . A strange instinct of purity that wished to save her soul from pollution! That illusory soul! Her reason was not duped by the conventional morality. But her instinct was stronger and it saw more clearly. . . . Entirely occupied by her double obsession—the door and the window—she did not see what was close to her. Walking towards the window, she struck herself violently in the stomach against the sharp corner of the sideboard. The pain was so severe that she could not breathe. Doubled over, with her hands on the wounded spot, she felt a keen, revengeful joy that her stomach had been struck. She would have liked to break to pieces in her body the blind and drunken master, the tiger-god. . . . Then the reaction came. She sank down on a low chair that fitted in between the sideboard and the window, and her strength failed her. Her hands were icy, her face beaded with perspiration; the beating of her disordered heart wavered. Ready to slip into the abyss, she had only one thought, "Quicker, quicker! . . ."
She fainted.
[XLIX]
When she opened her eyes again—(When was it? After a few seconds? . . . A gulf . . . )—her head was thrown back as if on a block, her neck was lying against the window-sill, her body wedged into the narrow angle of the wall. She opened her eyes and over the dark roofs, in the July night, she saw the stars. . . . One of them pierced her with its divine gaze.
Silence, unprecedented, vast as a plain. . . . Yet the wagons were rolling by in the street below; the glasses on the sideboard vibrated. She heard nothing. . . . Suspended between earth and sky. . . . "A noiseless fight." . . . "She was not entirely awake. . . ."
She put off the moment. She was afraid of finding again what she had left behind—the horrible lassitude, the torment, the snare of love: love, maternity, implacable egoism, that of nature who cares so little for my troubles, who only watches till I awaken so as to break my heart. . . . Never to wake again! . . .
She became conscious, none the less. And she saw that the enemy was no longer there. Her despair had vanished. . . . Vanished? No, it was still there, but it was no longer in her. She saw it outside. She heard its rustle. . . . Magic. . . . A terrible music disclosing unknown spaces. . . . Paralyzed, Annette heard, as if some invisible hand were conjuring it up in the room, the sound of sobbing, the Fatum of a Chopin prelude. Her heart was flooded with a joy she had never before experienced. It had nothing but the name in common with the poor joy of everyday life which is afraid of pain, which only exists because it denies pain, denies that immense joy which is also pain. . . . Annette listened with closed eyes. The voice stopped. There was an expectant silence. And suddenly from the torn soul a wild cry of deliverance flew upward as if on wings. As a diamond leaves its track on a piece of glass, it streaked across the vault of the night. In her exhaustion, as she lay on her hard pillow, Annette, on the threshold of this night of sorrow, gave birth to a new soul. . . .
The silent cry whirled far away and disappeared in the abyss of thought. Annette remained silent and motionless. A long time. . . . At last she rose, her neck aching, her limbs stiff. But her soul was delivered. An irresistible force pushed her towards the table. She did not know what she was going to do. Her heart was in her throat. She could not keep it all to herself. She took up her pen and, in a whirlwind of passion, without metre, in a rough and jerky rhythm, in a single torrent, she poured out the flood of pain. . . .
You have come, your hand holds me,—I kiss your hand.
In love, in fear,—I kiss your hand.
Love, you have come to destroy me. I know it well.
My knees tremble. Come, destroy!—I kiss your hand.