Then where are the nights which are to enlighten me? Of him I know nothing but my love, nothing except that by his very existence he contradicts what I know of him. Who will tell me how far I must go and to what I must attain? I have slept in his arms, I have lived side by side with all his cares, and I have given myself up to him with a joy like unto which there is nothing. All I have given is myself. And yet more is necessary.
And a great conviction rises up straight and strong and shines as if a light had sprung from the midst of the meadows.
I am only a woman, I can think only spasmodically. I love as one weeps, but there comes a day of which this is the night, on which your forehead touches the profound truth. You feel the loving-kindness of your heart aroused, and you oddly understand that the perfect union of man and woman has never been part of the natural scheme of things, and in order to be happy together it is not enough to love one another.
Come. We may return. Press me close to you, if you will, closer still. Don't let us talk.
I know why I am content: your arms, my all-powerful life, our firm footsteps. I do not know why the slight shadow seems to have vanished: to live, go forward, pierce the narrow track of the road with your clear eyes for stars, follow a night one does not see....
And then, O God, in braving the heavens, to understand with love that which transcends love.
I hesitate to go out on the street. I feel that people's eyes are drawn to my figure. There's no use fooling myself. The little girls actually point to me with furtive, vinegary glances, for they are more ingenuously hypocritical than women. Their insistent gaze embarrasses me.
Two long months to wait before the first cry of my child! If only I carried nothing beside my child. I feel also an imprisoned love developing which beats at the bars of its cage and chafes so that I don't know how to distract it.
The layette is quite ready; swaddling-bands warm to the touch, chemises like a doll's, caps which will never be of use; the equipment of a marionette; linen as soft as lint, bibs round and puffy as cockades. I have spread everything out in front of me, and each article as it passes through my hands assumes a shadowy lifelikeness.