One evening in speaking of her home and saying how
happily she looked forward to meeting her husband, she used a phrase so
tender, warm and chaste that I caught a glimpse of the woman in her. Her
face, always behind a mask of energy, turned gentle and serious as if
veiled by serenity. I imagined a couple in her image, for it is the
woman who makes or unmakes the couple. She must have achieved a deep
marriage.... The weather was fine and bright, and we left for home
together.

I think I shall always remember her pure voice, which revealed the
restlessness of living like a burning bush hidden behind strength and
youth.... I kept wishing we'd never reach the corner where we had to
separate.

But there it was already. The red of the sky threw its glow on her face
and spread an impalpable halo of dusty rays behind her. "Till
to-morrow," she said. I almost ran off, my heart swelling with
gratitude. I remember my eyes smarted.

That was several months ago. When we decided to spend our vacation
together, I felt beforehand that we were going to be friends.

We made the rash experiment of bringing two couples, two poor couples,
under the same poor roof. We did it and we were gay and happy in the
doing. It makes you believe in miracles.

I do believe in miracles. It is not a miracle that this beautiful woman
with the tanned cheeks walking beside me is the strongest attraction in
the landscape because of the tall stem of her body, the dancing refrain
of her steps, and the brilliance of her complexion. Other women have
passed over the ageless earth who were as alive, as charming, as
stirring. The miracle is that her brow is clear, her manner clean-cut,
her gaze straight and sure and keen with intelligence; that she goes
lovingly toward a love which she has built with her own hands; that she
is free and strives to be sincere in her freedom. Our mothers knew not.
The woman in us owes them nothing but our faults.

If you look at this woman carrying her will on her shoulders, leading
her will on towards the realization of her inner idea, towards the
simple desire to be brave, to love, to be truthful; if you see her
passing in nature, if you see how she moves, how she takes into her
being the keen sea-air and how aware she is of everything, the great
eucalyptus, its gray-green leaves tossing in the wind, the ochre-colored
slope checkered with vines, the sleepy languor of the lovely coast-line
robed in blue, you can tell at a glanc