There was a moment's silence. Then I said softly: 'You don't mind having an unsuccessful writer for a husband?'
She answered at once: 'I've never thought of you as a writer.'
'How have you thought of me, then?'
'Well, I don't know,' she said, smiling. 'How can I possibly say? I know you too well by now… I know just what you're like.. . You're the same for me, always — whether you write or don't write.'
'But if you had to pronounce an opinion, what would it be?'
She hesitated, and then said, with sincerity: 'But one can't pronounce an opinion when one loves.'
And so we always came back again to the same point. There was, in this protestation of hers that she loved me, a touching persistence that moved me deeply. I took her hand and said: 'You're right. . And I too, just because I love you, although I know you very well, couldn't pass judgement upon you.'
With a flash of intelligence in her eyes, she exclaimed: 'It is so, isn't it? When one loves someone, one loves every aspect of that person — defects and all.'
I should have liked to say to her at that moment, with perfect sincerity: 'I love you as you are now, sitting up in bed, calm and serene in your beautiful nightdress, with your curls and your bunch of flowers and your clear, shining eyes. And I love you as you were a little time ago when you were dancing the dance of desire and gnashing your teeth and pulling up your dress and clinging to Antonio. . And I shall love you always.' But I said nothing of all this, because I realized that she understood that I knew everything, and that everything was now settled between us. Instead, I said: 'Perhaps one day I'll rewrite the story… it's not finished with yet. . Some day, when I think I'm capable of expressing certain things.'
'I'm convinced too,' she said cheerfully, 'that you ought to rewrite it — after some time.'