natural that, at such moments, our feminine
hearts, always ready to be poured out, should be filled with love and
incense. But it is thought strange that one of us should recognise and
greet the union of all the graces in the fairest of her sisters! And yet
one must be a woman to feel what I feel to-day, in unveiling and
adorning your beauty. For it charms me without intoxicating me, sheds
its radiance on me without dazzling me and makes my heart throb without
causing my hands to tremble.... When the lover for the first time
beholds the object of his love, longing clouds his eyes. Certainly, his
sentiment is no less noble or less great, but it is of a very different
nature! Other joys are mine, a thousand, new and glorious emotions,
emotions of the heart and of the mind, the childish and girlish joys of
dressing up, decorating and adorning, of creating form and colour, in a
word, beauty, the stuff of which happiness is made!"

Rose interrupted me:

"Happiness? Do you think so?"

"Yes, because beauty calls for love. Does not our happiness as women lie
above everything in love?"

Making one of those horrible movements with her feet, hands and
shoulders of which I had done my best to correct her, Rose expressed her
disgust with such violence as to undo the brooch with which I had just
fastened the folds of a long white drapery to her shoulders:

"Oh," she cried, "I hate love, I hate it!"

Then she covered her face with her open hands; slowly the material
slipped down to her waist; and her bust stood out against the dark
trees, white and pure as that of a marble statue.

The great calm that is born of beauty compelled me to silence. Rose
remained without moving, untroubled by the nudity which, at any other
time, she would have refused to unveil. Did her emotion make her
unconscious, or was it, on the contrary, lifting her to a plane in which
false modesty had no place? Did she, in that brief minute, realise how
our actions change their values in proportion to the fineness of our
perception?...

I threw my cloak round her and drew aside her hands: her face was wet
with tears. I cross-examined her: could she have suffered through love?

"What is the matter, Roseline? Why are you so bitter against something
you have never experienced?"

She tried to smile through her tears and said, innocently:

"It's nothing.... It was like a shower: it's over now, quite over....
You are right, I really don't know why love fills