Let us not fear any the more that this absolute sincerity, this double
transparent life of two beings who love each other, will destroy the
background of shadow and mystery that must exist at the bottom of any
lasting affection, nor that it will dry up the great unknown lake which,
at the summit of every love, feeds the desire for mutual knowledge, the
desire which itself is merely the most passionate form of the desire
for greater love. No, that background is only a sort of movable and
provisional scenery that serves to give to provisional loves the
illusion of infinite space. Remove it, and behind it there will at last
appear the genuine horizon, with the real sky and sea. As for the great
unknown lake, we soon perceive that, until this day, we had drawn from
it only a few drops of troubled water. It does not open on to love its
healing springs until the moment of sincerity; for the truth in two
beings is incomparably richer, deeper and less exhaustible than their
appearance, reticence and lies.
V
Lastly, let us not fear that we shall exhaust our sincerity nor imagine
that it will not be possible for us to attain its furthest limits. When
we believe and wish it absolute, it is never more than relative; for it
can manifest itself only within the borders of our conscience, and those
borders are shifted every day, so that the act or thought which we
present under the colours which we see in it at the moment of avowal may
have an import quite different from that which we attribute to it
to-day. In the same way, the act, thought or feeling which we do not
avow, because we do not yet perceive it, may become to-morrow the object
of a more urgent and graver avowal than all those which we have made to
this hour.