reply.

"Ah!" she says, "we try to juggle with words, but we can't conceal the
truth."

"The truth! I'm going to tell you what I have been truly, _I_. . . ."

* * * * * *

I could not prevent myself from saying it, from crying it in a loud and
trembling voice, leaning over her. For some moments there had been
outlined within me the tragic shape of the cry which at last came
forth. It was a sort of madness of sincerity and simplicity which
seized me.

And I, unveiling my life to her, though it slid away by the side of
hers, all my life, with its failings and its coarseness. I let her see
me in my desires, in my hungers, in my entrails.

Never has a confession so complete been thrown off. Yes, among the
fates which men and women bear together, one must be almost mad not to
lie. I tick off my past, the succession of love-affairs multiplied by
each other, and come to naught. I have been an ordinary man, no
better, no worse, than another; well, here I am, here is the man, here
is the lover.

I can see that she has half-risen, in the little bedroom which has lost
its color. She is afraid of the truth! She watches my words as you
look at a blasphemer. But the truth has seized me and cannot let me
go. And I recall what was--both this woman and that, and all those
whom I loved and never deigned to know what they brought me when they
brought their bodies; I recall the fierce selfishness which nothing
exhausted, and all the savagery of my life beside her. I say it
all--unable even to avoid the blows of brutal details--like a harsh
duty accomplished to the end.

Sometimes she murmured, like a sigh, "I knew it." At others, she would
say, almost like a sob, "That's true!" And once, too, she began a
confused protest, a sort of reproach. Then, soon, she listens nigher.
She might almost be left behind by the greatness of my confession; and,
gradually, I see her falling into silence, the twice-illumined woman on
that adorable side of the room, she still receives on her hair and neck
and hands, some morsels of heaven.

And what I am most ashamed of in those bygone days when I was mad after
the treasure of unknown women is this: that I spoke to them of eternal
fidelity, of superhuman enticements, of divine exaltation, of sacred
affinities which must be joined together at all costs, of beings who
have always been waiting for each other, and are made for each other,
and all that