I repeated, pensively and happily:
"Do you really love her?"
"Yes, I can say so honestly."
He hesitated a little and, speaking very slowly, as though picking his words from amid his memories, said:
"When we are sincere, we are bound to confess that the love which encircles all the movements of our body follows the movements of its strength or its weakness equally. It has its hours of exasperation, it is sometimes a tide that rises and floods everything: the past, the present, the future, the will, the spirit, the flesh. Then all becomes peaceful; the waves subside and we think that we love no more. We do love, however, but with a more detached joy. We have stepped outside love, as it were, and we contemplate its extent."
My breath came quickly and my hands, clasped on the table, were pressed close together. My heart was bursting with gladness for my Roseline. He saw my emotion and questioned me with deeper interest.
I replied without hesitation:
"I am happy in this love which comes to Rose so simply and candidly."
He pressed my hand as he said:
"Sometimes, on reading certain passages in your letters, I used to fear that you might be opposed to my intentions...."
I began to laugh:
"Yes, you will have read fine views concerning independence; and a tirade against the women who surrender too easily; and any number of things more or less contrary to your hopes. But do you not agree with me that our principles are at their soundest when they are least rigid and that our noblest convictions are those of which we see both sides at once? Woman even more than man must not be afraid of handling her morality a little roughly when occasion demands it, just as she sometimes ruffles her laces for the pleasure of the eyes, easily and naturally and without attaching too much importance to the matter."
3
He listens to my words as I listen to his, with surprised delight. We feel as if we were playing with the same thought, for it flashes from one life to the other without undergoing any alteration.
In point of fact, the human beings whom we see for the first time are not always new to us. True, we have never seen each other before, but our sympathies, our enthusiasms, inasmuch as they are common to both of us, have met more than once; and, now that we are talking, the form of our thoughts also corresponds, for, without intending it, we often look at the most abstract things objectively, because he is a painter and I a woman.
Oh, I know no more exquisite surprises than those chance meetings which suddenly bring you a friend at a turning in life's road! It is like a charming landscape which one has seen in a dream and which one now finds in reality, without even having hoped for it. You speak, laugh, recognise each other and above all you are astonished and go on being astonished, adorably and shamelessly, like children.
What we had to say was all interwoven, as though we were both drawing on the same memories. We were speaking of those friends of a day whom accident sometimes gives us and whom the very briefness of the emotion impresses deeply on our heart. They are there for ever, in a few clear, sharp strokes, like sketches:
"For instance, you go on a matter of business to see somebody whom you don't know. You chafe with annoyance as you cross the threshold. In spite of the material duty which you are performing, you consider that it is so much time wasted. Then, for some unknown reason, the atmosphere seems kindly. You find familiar things in the room where you are waiting: a picture which you might have chosen yourself, books which you know and like, things which look as if your own hand had arranged them. And you forget everything. With your forehead against the pane, you look at the roofs of the houses, at the streets, at all that little scene which is the constant companion of an existence which you do not know and with which you are about to come into touch; and your heart beats very fast, for a sort of foresight tells you that a friend is going to enter the room."
"That's quite true; and sometimes even we have already met him at some house or other; but then his mind displayed itself in a special attitude, inaccessible, motionless, lifeless, like a thing in a glass case. Now, we see him before us, in his own surroundings; and everything is changed. He has a smile which is made of just the same quality of affection as our own, a look instinct with the same sort of experience, a laugh that cheerfully faces like dangers, a mind responding to the same springs. And we talk and are contented and happy; and, when the sun enters at the window or when the fire flickers merrily in the hearth, we can easily picture spending the rest of our life there, in gladness and comfort. Anything that the one says is received by the other with an exclamation of delight. Yes, we have felt and seen things in the same way; and this little fact, natural though it may seem, is so rare that it appears extraordinary!"
With an abrupt movement that must be customary with him, my companion shook his head to fling back his thick hair, which darkened his forehead whenever he leant forward:
"And very often," he said, "you don't see each other again, or at least you don't see each other like that, because time is too swift and because everybody has to go his own road."
The bright shaft of sunlight was still between us. It came now from a higher point of the little window. In the shimmering dust, I conjured up the faces of scarce-seen friends. There were some whose features had become almost obliterated; but beyond them, as one sees an image in a crystal, I clearly perceived the ideas, the life, the soul that had for a moment throbbed on exactly the same level as my own.
I replied, in a very low voice:
"We remain infinitely grateful to people who have given us such minutes as those!"
And then, certain of hearing myself echoed, I cried, delightedly:
"Egoists should always be grateful and responsive, for gratitude is nothing but happiness prolonged by thought...."
"Yes, that is the whole secret of the responsive souclass="underline" to have sufficient impetus not to stop the sensation at the place where the joy itself stops."
"To have simply, like the runner, an impetus that carries us beyond the goal...."
4
Thus were our remarks unrolled like the links of one and the same chain; and yet how different were our two existences! His was devoid of all restlessness and agitation; and mine was still in need of it. His intelligence was active, but not at all anxious to appear so. For him, meditation was the great object; and, when I expressed my admiration of a modesty impossible to my own undisciplined pride, he replied, in all simplicity:
"Do not look upon this as modesty. The over-modest are often those whose pride is too great to find room on the surface."
"If I were a man or an older woman than I am," I said, laughingly, "I would choose your destiny; but, for the time being, I feel a genuine need to satisfy my youth and to give it a few of the little pleasures that suit it."
He tried to jest, like most men who disapprove of the trouble which we take to please them by making ourselves prettier or more brilliant; but at heart he was as fond as myself of feminine cajolery and frivolity.
"You are full of pride," I exclaimed, "when you have accomplished some noble action or produced some rare work of art; then why should not women be happy at realising in their persons consummate beauty and grace? It is very probable that, if Plato or Socrates had suddenly been turned into beautiful young creatures, their destiny would have been different from what it was; it is even exceedingly probable that wisdom would have prompted them very often to lay aside their writings and come and contemplate their charms in the admiration of men!"