And without knowing any more one would be lost, distraught, acquiescent, lulled to sleep even to the soul, more beautiful than one is beautiful.
I can go still further, for the flesh that clasps cannot be deceived. When the man and the woman are united, it is the woman subdued, armed with her weakness, who becomes the stronger. I am sure of it already. In the depths of my ignorant flesh, I already feel domination germinating. It is not I; it is a law older than I that is seeking to fulfill itself.
But I am mad.... Man, woman, nothing but two words, which are not of the stuff of life. Is there a single emotion in which I recognize myself? Truth? But it is the truth of others. The truth that reaches you is always different. Isn't it senseless to dread what depends upon yourself? Are we strangers that I should hesitate like this to run to him? Isn't he on the other side of the door, he of whom my body is _thinking_? Isn't it enough for us to look upon each other? Is there a single question he cannot understand? One seeks happiness. It is all so simple....
Ah, let us go astray every day, let us deceive ourselves, let us suffer alongside our own hearts, let us try to clasp the invisible! But this evening there is nothing but a thin partition between my secret and myself. I feel my heart throbbing as if it were laid bare. I am beautiful, I am alive....
It is her eyes in particular. Ever since her eyes have made a part of my life, I have known what nostalgia for Brittany means, and the infinite mournfulness with which it permeates a human being.
She is like the rest of her race, short-legged, round, thick-set, and her gestures conceal rather than reveal her hands. She talks in a singsong and ends with a sigh. Her name is Marie, as though she were a little nurse-maid of eighteen at thirty francs a month. Oh, it's not the room she takes up. But for her blue-thistle gaze and the plaint of her body, you'd scarcely know she was there.
Seven o'clock. I am already on the street with bent head, insensible to the allurements of the shops, driven blindly on with cheeks inflamed by the wind.
The great porte-cochère, the steps three at a time, two pulls at the bell, long, breathless minutes; finally the door opens, cautiously. Marie behind the door squeezes herself up on tiptoe against the wall to let me pass.