moaning and fading at my approach, she would understand that age in a
woman is an offense love cannot forgive.

* * * * *

"Your eyes are searching space. You are wondering where such a
conversation would lead her and me. Don't bother. It would merely lead
me to the side of truth and her to its summit. I imagined that was
enough and one could stop there.

"I imagined that after I had spoken, she would rise and stand without
taking a single step, upright and solemn, her work at her feet, she
would feel the morals of the world collapse, its false hells, its
hardness and harshness, its monstrous delusions, everything that
sheathed her in a coat of mail and incited her to self-defense....
Feeling her heart set at liberty, she would think of you, but of you
with your body sloughed; of your real self hidden where neither she nor
I can penetrate.

"Then she would draw nearer--would she know to what? It is a deep-seated
law in us to try desperately to approach something. She would rediscover
the dazzling moments when her twenty years of age gave her the power to
bid the submissive universe do everything for your good. It would be a
similar instant that I would place like a sheaf of wheat in her open
arms. Don't you see?

"The room sparkles in all its sunlight; every surface sends forth
gleams; the day calls to the day and floats before her. Are we rivals?
We are simply sisters in the same love. I want to take her hands because
I remember that once you chose her....

"Well....

"But my notion is squelched. I couldn't help it. Your astonished
expression squelched it. Before I spoke, when the idea was still
imprisoned behind the wall of my forehead, it gave me a light like a
torch, I assure you. You questioned me, and now it's a mocking
will-o'-the-wisp, teasing me from a distance and vanishing as I advance.
Didn't I tell you it was an idea not to be handled?

"I have fallen short of caressing a bit of truth between my clasped
hands. It escaped me.... And you smile consoled."

XXIII

Twice we said we would part at the turn of the road, at that tree,
exactly at that tree, and twice we passed by laughing at our weakness.
We still could not believe in the separation at hand.

But the moment was upon us.

There, at the house hidden behind the trees and bushes, you will go on,
and I will stand still.

He pressed my hand with increasing tenderness. My laugh taunted us with
so much assur