hich nothing is forgotten, you will practice patience which is as long
as life, and maternity which is as heavy as the world.

I shall come in, I shall open the door in the dark, I shall hear you
come from the next room, bringing the lamp. A dawn will announce you.
You will tell me the quiet story of your day's work, without any object
except to give me your thoughts and your life. You will speak of your
childhood memories. I shall not understand them very well because you
will be able to give me, perforce, only insufficient details, but I
shall love your sweet strange language.

We shall speak of the child we shall have, and you will bend your head
and your neck, white as milk, and in our minds we shall hear the
rocking of the cradle like a rustling of wings. And when we are tired
out, and even after we have grown old, we shall dream afresh along with
our child.

After this revery our thoughts will not stray, but linger tenderly. In
the evening we shall think of the night. You will be full of a happy
thought. Your inner life will be gay and shining, not because of what
you see, but because of your heart. You will beam as blind people
beam.

We shall sit up facing each other. But little by little, as it gets
late, our words will become fewer and less intelligible. Sleep will
lay bare your soul. You will fall asleep over the table, you will feel
me watching over you more and more.

Tenderness is greater than love. I do not admire carnal love when it
is by itself and bare. I do not admire its disorderly selfish
paroxysms, so grossly short-lived. And yet without love the attachment
of two human beings is always weak. Love must be added to affection.
The things it contributes to a union are absolutely needed--exclusiveness,
intimacy, and simplicity.

CHAPTER XVI

I went out on the street like an exile, I who am an everyday man, who
resemble everybody else so much, too much. I went through the streets
and crossed the squares with my eyes fixed upon things without seeing
them. I was walking, but I seemed to be falling from dream to dream,
from desire to desire. A door ajar, an open window gave me a pang. A
woman passing by grazed against me, a woman who told me nothing of what
she might have told me. I dreamed of her tragedy and of mine. She
entered a house, she disappeared, she was dead.

I stood still, a prey to a thousand thoughts, stifled in the robe of
the evening. From a closed wi