We came to where the country takes a sudden dip, so that to be visible to the heavens it has to cling to the bronzed trunks of the half-stripped cork-trees. We went on breasting the wind. I knitted my brows. Everything she said breathed, at least to me, another age or another sphere; it all hinged on love, was dedicated to love, and by that very fact created a distance between us. I saw her cramped and confined by the very thing that gave her so much vitality; I saw it was her crucifixion. She was nothing but the instinct for love restricted to the need of man. Nevertheless she attracted me.
We got to know each other better. She astonished me more and more. Whether she and her lover carried on a squally conversation on the bench in the hall or whether she wandered along the narrow, brambly paths in a sort of ferocious abandon, or whether she came to me and threw her thorny crown at my feet with a radiant gesture, she was Woman as men have described her, as they have wanted her. She was the ancient bearer of a fatal property, the creature who either subdues her opponent or is subdued by him, and knows nothing else; the sorry creature of tears and fascinations....
She never spoke of her life or of herself. We were two women, our lot therefore was the same, she was in love, I was in love. What else need one want?
"Good-bye for the present," she cried as the cart set off down the road at a snail's pace. She stood with her head inclined tenderly sidewise and her floating veil prolonging the farewell.... There was a bend in the road. I thought that was to be my last view of her.
But a little while ago as I was going to lie down, an imperious ring tore the silence. Actually she, her smile, her veil, her dress a tangle of silver.
"What a pretty little nest! How comfortable you must be! Well, well. Still happy?"
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.