It is a dull, drab winter's day. There i_The Choice of Life

that shows through the muslin blinds. On the branches of the bare trees,

a few dead leaves, which the wind has left behind, shiver miserably at

some passing gust. There is just enough noise for us to enjoy the peace

that enfolds the house. From time to time, carriage-wheels roll by and

the crack of a whip cuts into our silence; then the dog wakes, sits up,

looks questioningly at me and quietly puts his nose back between his

paws and begins to snore again. Rose is sitting opposite him, on the

other side of the fire-place. She is holding a book in her hands without

reading it. Her beautiful eyes are staring dreamily at the fitful

flames.

I rose and went upstairs to fetch a volume which I wanted. Both of

them, the dog and she, accompanied me, yawning and stretching themselves

as they went. They stood beside the book-case, like two witnesses,

equally useless and equally indispensable, and watched me searching. I

shivered in the cold room. Rose gave a little cough; and the dog tried

to curl himself up in the folds of my skirt.

Then we all three went down again; and, when I had gone back to my

place, they docilely resumed theirs on either side of the chimney.

The dog, before settling down, turned several times on his cushion,

arching his back, with his tail between his legs and his critical nose

quivering with satisfaction. Rose also has seen that her armchair is as

comfortable as it can be made. Now, lying back luxuriously, with her

elbows on the rests and her head on a soft cushion, she is evidently not

much troubled at the thought of a long day indoors.

In the two months since Rose left Sainte-Colombe, I have drilled her

into an intermittent attempt at style which is the utmost that she will

ever achieve, I fear; for her will, unhappily, is incapable of

sustained effort. When she has to hold herself upright for several hours

at a time, I see her gradually stooping as though invisible forces were

dragging her down.

Certainly, it is no longer the Rose of Sainte-Colombe who is here beside

me. How much of her remains? Her general appearance is transformed by

her clothes and the way in which she wears her hair; her voice and

gestures are softer; but all this minute and complex change is but the

subtle effect of events, the disconcerting effect of an influence that

has laid itself upon her nature without altering it in any way. And this

is what really causes my uneasiness. She is changed, but she has not

changed.

I take her with me wherever I have to go. She accompanies me on my walks

and drives, in my shopping, to the play. Men consider her beautiful, but

her indifference keeps love at a distance: love, the passion in which I

placed, in which I still place the hopes that remain to me.

As for Rose herself, she is always pleased, without being enthusiastic,

and never expresses a wish or a desire.

I sometimes laugh and say:

"You have a weatherproof soul; and your common sense is as starched as

your Sunday cap used to be!"

But at heart she saddens me. To keep my interest in her alive, I find

myself wishing that she had some glaring fault. And at the same time I

am angry with myself for not appreciating the exclusiveness of her

affection better. I am actually beginning to think that this extravagant

sentiment is fatal to her. I look upon it in her heart as I look upon

the great tree in my garden, which interferes with the growth of

everything around it: fond as I am of that tree, I consider it something

of an enemy.

CHAPTER IX

This afternoon, the whole atmosphere of the house is changed. There is

no silence, no work. The maid fusses about, spreading out my dresses

before Rose and me. We cannot settle upon anything.

"We shall have to try them on you," I say.

But at the very first our choice is made.

A cry of admiration escapes me at the sight of Rose sheathed from head

to foot in a long green-velvet tunic that falls heavily around her,

without ornament or jewellery. From the high velvet collar, her head

rises like a flower from its calyx; and I have never beheld a richer

harmony than that of her golden hair streaming over the emerald green.

While I finish dressing her, we talk:

"You are having all your friends," she says.

"Some of them, those who live in Paris at this season. I have done for

you to-day what I seldom care to do: I have asked them all together. But

I have made a point of insisting that the strictest isolation shall be

maintained."

Rose laughed as she asked me what I meant.

"It's quite simple," I answered. "We shall throw open all the doors; and

there will be no crowding permitted! No general conversation, no loud

talking ..."

"In short," she exclaimed, "the exact opposite to the convent, where we

were forbidden to talk in twos."

"That is to say, where you were forbidden to talk at all; for there is

no real conversation with more than one. As long as you have not spoken

to a person alone, can you say that you have ever seen her?"

She did not appear convinced; and I continued:

"But just think! Conversation in pairs, when two people are in

sympathy--and they are nearly always in sympathy when they are face to

face--can be as sincere as lonely meditations."

I felt that she shared my sentiment; but her reasonable nature makes her

always steer a middle course, never leaning to either side.

The pale winter sun is beginning to wane, but there is still plenty of

daylight in the white drawing-room. And I look at my friends, who have

formed little groups in harmony with my wishes and their own. When an

increased intimacy brings us all closer together, the party will gain by

that earlier informality. Each life will have been given its normal

pitch and will try at least to keep it. For our souls are such sensitive

instruments that they can rarely strike as much as a true third.

Blanche, with the agate eyes and the cloud of chestnut hair, is a

picture of autumn in the brown and red of her frock, with its bands of

sable. She is listening attentively to Marcienne. The fair Marcienne

herself, whom I love for her passionate pride, is sitting near the

fire-place; and her wonderful profile stands out against the flames. Her

mouth is a fierce red; but the figure which shows through the

pale-coloured tailor-made dress is full of tender childish curves. The

swansdown toque makes her black hair seem blacker still. She is talking

seriously and holding out to the flames her fingers covered with rings.

The wide-open door reveals the darker bedroom, in which the lights are

already turned on. A young married woman is sitting with her elbows on

the table. She is reading a poem in a low voice; and from time to time a

few words, spoken more loudly, mingle with the semi-silence of the other

rooms. Bending under the lamp-shade, her brown hair is bathed in the

light, while her profile is veiled by her hand and the lines of her body

are lost in the dark dress which melts into the shadow. Near her,

leaning against the white wall, two white figures listen and dream.

I see Rose. She is standing, all emerald and gold, in the middle of the

next room. Behind her, a mirror reflects the copper candelabra whose

lighted branches surround her with stars. A placidly-smiling Madonna,

chaste and cold, dazzling and glorious, she talks to the inseparables,

Aurelie and Renee.

Renee, clad in deep mourning, is a delicious little princess of jet,

with lint-white hair and flax-blue irises. Her companion, crowned with

glowing tresses, knows the splendour of her green eyes and, with a

cunning fan-like play of her long eyelids, amuses herself by making them

appear and disappear.

My attention is recalled to the visitor by my side, a young Dutchwoman

not yet quite at home in France. She is shy in speaking and she does not

know my friends. I look at her. Her fair round face is quaintly framed

in the smooth coils of her golden hair. Her eyes are a cloudless blue.

Her nose, which is a little heavy and serious, belies the smiling mouth,

with its corners that turn up so readily. The very long and very lovely

neck makes one follow in thought the hollow of the nape and the slope of

the shoulders vanishing in a snowy cloud of Mechlin lace. On the

deliberately antiquated black-silk dress, a gold chain and a miniature

set in brilliants give the finishing touch to a style classic in its

chastity. Seated in a grandfather's chair in the embrasure of the

window, she reminds one of Mme. de Mortsauf in Balzac's _Lys dans la

vallee_.

But she is also the very embodiment of Zealand. You can picture her head

covered with a lace cap and her temples adorned with gold corkscrews.

Behind her you conjure up flat horizons, slow-turning wind-mills, little

red-and-green houses in which the inmates seem to play at living. How

charming she looks in the last rays of light, at once childish and

dignified, passive and romantic ... and so different from the rest!

But has not each her particular interest, her special grace? When my

eyes go from one to another, they tell a rosary of precious beads, each

with its own peculiar beauty, neither greater nor less than its fellows!

What a glad and wondrous thing it is to be women, to be delicate, pretty

things, infinitely sensitive and infinitely varied, living works of art,

matter for kisses, the realised stuff of dreams! When you look at them

like that, solely in the decorative sense, you are ready to condemn

those who work, who think and who concentrate upon an aim of some sort,

for these superfine creatures carry the reason for their existence

within themselves, so great is the perfection which they achieve with a

gesture, an attitude, a glance. And then you reflect upon what they too

often are in the privacy of their lives: narrow and domineering,

attached to petty, useless duties, their minds lacking dignity, their

souls lacking horizon; and you are sorry that they have not grown,

through the sheer consciousness of their beauty, into ways that are

kindly and generous.

I let my hand rest lightly on Cecilia's hands; and in the sweetness of

the gathering dusk we both dream. Like the scent of flowers, the

different natures seem to find a more precise expression as their

shapes fade. I explain them to Cecilia, who does not know them.

Aurelie and Renee draw my eyes with their laughter; and I begin with

them. They are the careless lovers, idle for the exquisite pleasure of

idleness. They live a dream-life, the life of a child that sleeps,

dresses itself, goes for a walk, eats sweets and plays with its dolls.

They are good-natured as well as frivolous, lissom of mind as well as of

body, indulgent to others and charming in themselves. Love, resting on

their young and tender lives, makes them more tender yet, like the light

that lingers long and fondly upon a soft-tinted pastel.

Next comes the turn of Marcienne, who, greatly daring, has broken with

her family and given up worldly luxury, to work and live freely with the

man of her choice.

Beside her is Blanche, still restless and undecided, attracted by love

and irritated by her sister Hermione, who pursues a vision of charity

and redemption.

Here my friend's fine profile turns to the other groups; and I continue:

"The one whom we call Sister Hermione you can see in the dark bedroom,

reading under the light of the lamp, with her face hidden in her

hands."

"Is she good-looking?"

"Very, but tries not to seem so. That is why she is always so simply

dressed."

Cecilia interrupts me:

"But her dress isn't simple!"

"You are quite right. It is made complex by a thousand superfluous

fripperies. Hermione has not been slow to understand that, to counteract

perfect beauty, you must read simplicity to mean commonplace

triviality."

A flutter of silk, a gleam of a silver-white skirt in the waning light,

a whiff of orris-root; and Marcienne glides down to our feet with a

lithe, cat-like movement. In a curt, passionate tone, she says:

"You are speaking of Hermione. Oh, do try and persuade her sister not to

go the same way: is not one enough? Must more loveliness be wasted?"

Sitting on a cushion on the floor, she raises her glowing face, her eyes

dark as night, her scarlet mouth, her dazzling pallor.

"I shall do nothing of the sort," I answer with a laugh, "for I rather

like Hermione's folly; besides, her reason will soon conquer it! The

dangers we run depend on chance; the first roads we take depend on

influences. The way in which we bear those dangers and return from those

roads: that is where the interest begins!"

"But, tell me," murmurs Cecilia, "what does your Hermione want?"

"Here is her story, in a couple of words," says Marcienne. "She is rich,

beautiful and talented; and she belongs to an aristocratic English

family. At twenty, she yielded to an impulse and went on the stage; in a

few months, she was a really successful actress; then she made the

acquaintance of a Hindu high-priest. He came and went; and she followed

him. During the last two years, she has been his faithful disciple."

"But what does she preach?"

Marcienne made a vague gesture:

"Buddhist doctrines! She believes that she possesses the true faith and

tries to hand it on to others. In the few days which she has spent in

Paris, she has already made two converts, those two innocents who are

hanging on her words. It would all be charming, you know, if her creed

did not enjoin chastity and if, by holding those views, she did not risk

the awful fate of never knowing love!"

Marcienne continued, still addressing herself to my new friend:

"Do you see those pretty creatures in white, standing close to Hermione?

They are two orphans, two girls who fell in love with the same man. I

don't know the details of the romance, nor can I say whether it was

fancy or passion that guided the man's choice. All I know is that he

loved one of them and had a child by her. A little while after, he

deserted her. Thereupon their unhappy love reunited those two hearts

which happy love, as always, had divided. The same devotion and kindness

made them both bend over the one cradle. Oh, the adorable pity that

prompted Anne's heart on the day when, hearing her baby call her mamma

for the first time, she sent for her sister Marie and, holding towards

her those little outstretched arms, those eyes in which consciousness

was dawning, that little fluttering life seeking a resting-place, she

offered the maid, in the exquisite mystery of that first smile, the

first name of love! From that time onward, the baby grew up between its

two mammas as one treads a sunny path between two flowering banks."

Marcienne had a gift for pretty phrases of this kind, which she would

let fall not without a certain affectation. She liked talking and I

liked listening to her. I asked her what she thought of Rose. She

praised her beauty highly and even said the occasional awkwardness of

her movements made it more uncommon:

"For that matter," she added, "if it were not so, I should try to be

blind to it. A woman must understand that she lowers herself by

belittling her sisters. How immensely we increase man's ascendancy by

never praising one another!"

I began to laugh:

"Alas, I would not dare to say that the wisest among us, in extolling

our own sex, are not once more seeking the admiration of some man!"

And Marcienne, who has been to such pains to release herself from the

worldly surroundings amid which she suffered, goes on speaking long and

passionately. There is a note of pain in her voice as she says:

"Everything separates us and removes us one from the other, education

even more than instinct. If woman only knew how she lessens her power by

blindly respecting the petty social laws of which she is nevertheless

the sole judge and dictator! Whereas she hands them down meekly, from

mother to daughter, with all their wearisome restrictions, and grows

indignant if some one bolder ventures to transgress them. And yet it is

in this domain, which is hers, that she might extend her power by

gradually overthrowing the old idols."

And she also says:

"Almost always, in defending a woman, we have occasion to strike a

mortal blow at some ancient prejudice. For my part, I must confess that

I take a mischievous delight in bestowing special indulgence on things

which often are too severe a test for that indulgence in others; for,

rather than be suspected of impugning ever so lightly some worn-out

principle, they will wound and wound again the most innocent of their

sisters."

It is almost dark. I leave my companions in order to call for the lamps

and I stop near Rose as I pass through the next room. Here, all the

girls are clustered round Hermione, who is telling them a story of her

travels.

Anne and Marie are listening respectfully, while the two inseparables,

only half-attentive, are sharing a box of sweets.

Roseline throws her arms round me and, shrugging her shoulders, says:

"All this strikes me as such utter nonsense!"

She is certainly right, with her Normandy common sense; but does she not

need just a touch of this same nonsense to bring her faculties into

play, her powers into action?

When I return to the drawing-room, Blanche calls me with a laugh of

delight:

"Oh, look!" she cries. "I've found a book with a portrait of my beloved

Elizabeth Browning. Look at that sweet, gentle face, surrounded with

ringlets: it's just as I imagined her. I love her all the better now."

They had opened other books written by women and, leaning over the

table, were comparing the frontispiece portraits of the authors,

interesting or handsome, grave or smiling, young or old. Even so do

certain little volumes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries open

nearly always with an engraving faded by time and representing charming

faces all of the same class and often with similar expressions and

features: a delicate nose, a bow-shaped, smiling mouth, intelligent eyes

with no mysterious depths, dimpled cheeks, a string of pearls round the

neck, a loosely-tied kerchief just revealing a swelling bosom, wanton

curls dancing against a dark background in a frame of roses upheld by

Cupids. And the quiver and the arrows and the flying ribbons and the

turtle-doves: all this, joined to the letters, the maxims or the verses,

often grave or even sad, sometimes calm and reasonable, sometimes

passionate, brings before us in a few strokes the harmonious picture of

woman's life.

"It is no longer the fashion in these days," murmured Blanche. "And yet

is there not an intimate relation between a woman's work and her

appearance?"

"That is the reason, no doubt," replied Marcienne, "why it seems, unlike

man's, to grow smaller as it passes out of the present. We see the

immortal pages disappear like the fallen petals of a flower. It's sad,

don't you think?"

Struck with the beauty of her closing words, we listened to her in

silence. She continued to turn the leaves at random and resumed:

"But, oh, the exquisite art which a woman's work can show when she is

not only beautiful, but truly wise, when a lovely hand indites stately

verse, when a life holds or breathes nothing but high romance ... and

love! For it is love and love alone that makes a woman's brain

conceive."

Cecilia, who was gradually losing her shyness, made a gesture to silence

us and said, slowly:

"I'll tell you something!"

A general peal of laughter greeted this phrase with which the young

Dutchwoman, according to the custom of her country, always ushers in her

least words. To make yourself better understood by slow and absent

minds, is it not well to give a warning? It is a sort of little spring

that goes off first and arouses people's attention. Then the thought is

there, ready for utterance. And sometimes, amid the silence, an

announcement is made that it will be fine to-morrow, or that it is hot

and that a storm is threatening.

But Cecilia is much too clever to cast aside those little mannerisms of

her native race which so charmingly accentuate her special type of

beauty. So she joined in our laughter with a good grace and, after

repeating her warning, observed, in her hesitating language, that, by

thus admitting ourselves to be the mere creatures of love, we were

justifying the opinion of the men who treat us as "looking-glasses."

"Looking-glasses? Men's looking-glasses? And why not?" I exclaimed. "It

is not for us women to decry that looking-glass side of us. It is

serious, more serious than you think, for on the beauty of our

reflection often depend our ardour, our courage, our very character and

all the energies that create or affect our actions. Besides, whether men

or women, we can only reflect one another and we ourselves do not become

conscious of our powers until the day of the supreme love, as if, till

then, we had only seen ourselves in pocket-mirrors which never reflect

more than a morsel of our lives, a movement, a gesture ... and which

always distort it!"

Every mouth quivered with laughter. I insisted:

"If women often have so much difficulty in learning to know their own

characters, it is because most men are scornful mirrors, occupied with

nothing smaller than the universe and never dreaming of reflecting women

except in a grudging and imperfect fashion."

"It is true," said Marcienne, thinking of her lover, a man whose

domineering temper often made him unjust to her. "Men's lives would be

less serenely confident if our amiable and accommodating souls did not

afford them a vision incessantly embellished by love ... and always

having infinity for a background!"

And, with a satirical smile, she added:

"Let us accept the part of looking-glasses, but let us place our gods in

a still higher light! They will not complain; and we shall at least have

the advantage of seeing beyond them a little space and brightness."

The conversation then assumed a more personal character, each of us

thinking of the well-beloved: Marcienne, ever mournful and passionate;

the gentle Blanche, anxious, secretly plighted to an absent lover; and

Cecilia, all absorbed in her young happiness with the husband of her

choice.

Hermione and her cluster of girls had gradually come nearer. She dresses

badly, she does her hair with uncompromising severity, but, in spite of

it all, Hermione is very beautiful; and her loveliness triumphs over her

commonplace clothes, even as her generous heart and the noble

restlessness of her mind keep her on a plane which is loftier than the

narrow dogmas of her creed.

During a moment's silence, I hear her answer a question put by Rose:

"Oh, what does it matter if I am wrong, as long as I make others happy!"

And all my friends, like a sheaf of glowing flowers, seemed to be bound

together by that word of loving-kindness. Were they not all, these

bestowers of joy, living in a world into which neither sin nor error

entered, their lives obeying the same eternal principles of love,

following the sacred law of nature which fills our hearts with

tenderness and our bodies with longing?

They were now able to talk together. Their remarks would not be vain,

ordinary or frivolous. During the first moments of isolation, each of

them had pursued her own thoughts and continued her own life. Each had

reached that perfect diapason at which the most antagonistic spirits are

in supreme unison. Heedless of different objects or of diverse aims, the

same yearning for generosity, the same thirst after graciousness and

beauty united their hearts; and their minds, leaping all barriers, came

to an understanding of one another in a region beyond opinions. All

these young and beautiful creatures, all these forms fashioned for

delight exhaled an atmosphere of love. Were they not all alike its

votaries?

One alone, in a fiercer glow of enthusiasm and with a doubtless finer

sensualism, one alone attempts to offer up her life to a God! The

glorious folly of her! How I love to see her, vainly tormenting her

beauty, seeking infinity, aspiring to bear peace across the world. I see

her soul like a walled garden in which all the flowers lift themselves

higher and higher, struggling to offer themselves to a moment of light.

But, in a day of greater discontent and in an hour of maturity, the

illusory fence will fall and the fair life will stand in open space.

Then, drunk with boundless earth and boundless sky, the woman, restored

to nature, will doubtless find herself more attuned to pleasure than

were the others and more responsive to joy.

I looked at all those bowed heads, dark or fair, dusky or golden, those

lovely forms revealed by their clinging robes, those delicate profiles

bent over the portraits and writings of their sisters, far-off friends,

vanished, unknown or absent, whose power of love still lives for all men

and for all time ... immortal tears, petals dropped from the flower.

Then my glistening eyes turned towards my Roseline. She was there,

indifferent, unmoved, perhaps secretly bored.

And my thoughts wept in my heart.

The most beautiful things cannot be given.

CHAPTER X

I had been out of town for a time. Returning to Paris a day sooner than

I intended, I wished to give Rose the pleasure of an unexpected arrival

and I went to see her that same evening. Though it was not more than ten

o'clock, the lights were already out in the strictly-managed

boarding-house. There was a row of brass candlesticks on the hall-table.

The man-servant wanted to give me one; but I was impatient, thanked him

hurriedly and ran upstairs in the dark.

I could not have told why I was so happy; for, though I should not have

been willing to confess it, I had long lost all my illusions about the

girl. But she was so beautiful; and her passive temperament left so much

room for my fancy! I never made any headway; but at the moment it always

seemed to me as if I were heard and understood. I used to write on that

unresisting life as one writes on the sand; and, the easier I found it

to make the impress of my will, the faster was it obliterated.

When I reached the floor on which Rose's bedroom was, I stopped in the

dark passage. A narrow streak of light showed me that her door was not

quite shut. Then, gathering up my skirts to deaden their sound, I felt

along the wall and crept softly, on tip-toe, so as to take her by

surprise. With infinite precautions, I slowly pushed the door open. I

first caught sight of a corner of the empty bed, with its white curtains

still closed; then of a candle-end burning on the table and of flowers

and a broken vase lying on the ground. What could she be doing?

I was so far from imagining the truth that I do not know how I beheld it

without betraying my presence by a movement or a sound. There was a

young man in the room.

I saw his face, straight opposite me, near the guttering candle. A man

in Rose's bedroom! A friend, no doubt; a lover, perhaps! But why had she

never mentioned him to me? I had been away a month; and in not one of

her letters had she ever spoken of him. A friend? A lover? Could she

have a whole existence of which I knew nothing? Could her quiet life be

feigned? But why?

At the risk of revealing my presence, I opened the door still farther;

and then I saw her profile bending forward. Thus posed, it stood out

against the black marble of the mantel-piece like a cameo. Rose had let

down her hair, as she did every evening. Her bodice was unfastened; and

the two golden tresses brought forward over her breast meekly followed

the curve of her half-exposed bosom. She was not astonished, she was not

even excited. She seemed to acquiesce in the man's presence in her room;

it was no doubt customary.

And suddenly, amid the thousand details that engaged my attention, a

light flashed across me: was not Rose's companion one of the boarders in

the house, perhaps that painter of whom she had told me, the one who

made a sketch of her head which she brought to me a few days after her

arrival in Paris?

His eyes never left her. He watched and followed her every movement,

whereas she, in her perfect composure, did not seem even to heed his

presence. And that was what struck me: Rose's impassiveness in the face

of that anxious and silent prayer. Did she not see? Could she not

understand? I almost longed to rush at her and cry:

"But look, open your eyes; that man is entreating you!... If you do not

share his emotions, at least be touched by his suffering; if not your

lips, give him a glance or a smile!"

Oh, how like her it all is! And how the anxious pleading of the wooer

resembles the vain waiting of the friend! But, alas, what in my case is

but a disappointment of the heart, a tiresome obstacle to the evolution

of an idea, is perhaps in his case a cruel and lasting ordeal!

Suddenly, he falls on his knees before the girl. With his shaking hands,

he touches her breast; then he kisses it gently. She does not repel him,

but her bored and absent expression discourages any amorous action and

withers the kisses at the very moment when they alight upon her flesh.

Then he half-raises himself to gaze at her from head to foot; and with

all his ardour he silently asks for the consenting smile and the word

that gives permission.

I shall never forget his look, the superb animal look, brilliant,

glowing and empty as a ball-room deserted by the dancers, the superb,

outspoken look that accompanies the gift of life and seems to flee its

mystery at the moment when it approaches.

He stammered a few tender words. His voice thrilled me. It was grave and

clear as a bronze and silver bell. It rang true, for the most ephemeral

desire is not false. I knew, by the sense of his words, that Rose had

not yet given herself.

Sullenly and as though annoyed by the soft words, she brought the dark

stuff of her bodice over her white bosom. To the young man it was like a

cloud passing over the sky; and, whether or not because the girl's

resistance exasperated him, he suddenly pressed her to him, sought her

lips and made her bend for a moment under the violence of his embrace.

But, with an abrupt movement, with a sort of vindictive rage, she

succeeded in releasing herself.

Then I fled from the house.

I did not recover myself until I was on the quay outside and felt the

cold night-air against my face. My skirt was trailing on the ground; my

hands made no movement to hold it up.

With my disgust and resentment there was mingled a vague feeling of

remorse. Was it not I who had taught the girl the shamelessness that

admits desire and the prudence that refuses to submit to it? Had I not

wished for her, above all other treasures, the power of judging,

appreciating, choosing?

Yes, but when I had talked of choosing, I had never imagined that the

choice could be made in cold blood! So far from that, it had seemed to

me that no more dangerous or painful experience could visit a woman's

heart. The victory of mind over instinct and of will over desire is the

price of a hideous, abnormal struggle opposed to the very law of our

nature. A sad victory baptised with tears, a sacred preparation for the

noble defeat that is to crown a woman's life!

Besides, it was not her refusal that revolted me, for we cannot judge an

action of which we do not know the reasons; it was her demeanour, her

horrible indifference. The ugliness of the scene would not have offended

me, I reflected, if the woman had been in any way troubled by it; if I

had seen her resist her own desire or at least deplore that which she

was unable to share; if I had seen her struggle for a sentiment or

suffer for an idea, however absurd or wild! But Rose had had neither

tears nor compassion; and the blind instinct that always prompts us to

give our lives had not tempted her.

I continued to see that face of marble. I heard those impassive words. I

pictured that body which felt no thrill, that mouth which abandoned

itself without giving itself. No, I had never taught her anything of

that kind; for, however light the pain which we cause and whatever its

nature, we are forgiven only if our own heart feels a deeper wound. I

did not understand her conduct. What had prompted it? To what chains of

weakness had her soul stealthily attached itself, that soul which I had

jealously protected against all principles and prejudices? What secret

limits had she assigned herself despite my watchful care to give her

none?

I felt grieved and disappointed; and yet ... and yet I walked along with

a certain gladness in my step. The tears trembling on my lashes were not

tears of helplessness, but of a too-insistent energy, for they came

above all from my overwrought nerves. My mind saw clear and rent my

remorse like a superfluous veil.

No, I was not responsible! Our thought, once expressed, no longer

belongs to us. Whether it leave us when scarce ripe, because an accident

has gathered it, or whether it fall in its season, like the leaf

falling from the tree, we know nothing of what it will become; and it is

at once the wretchedness and the greatness of human thought to be

subjected to the infinite forms of every mind and of every existence.

I walked for a long time without heeding the hour. The sky was clear and

the stars glowed in its depths like live things; in the distance, the

Trocadero decked the night with brilliants.

And, little by little, hope returned to me. I was persuaded that over

there, in the little room which my care had provided for Rose, love

would yet be the conqueror. She would awaken under those kisses. My

Roseline should yet know passion and rapture. Love would triumph. It

would do what I had been unable to do, it would breathe life into

beauty! And, in the dead stillness, I kept hearing the kisses falling,

falling heavily, like the first drops of a storm.

CHAPTER XI

We are talking like old friends, he and I, in the little white bedroom.

Through the two curtains of the window high up in the wall a great ray

of sunshine falls, a column of dancing light that dies on the table

between us. I sit drumming absent-mindedly with my fingers in the

shimmering motes. He looks at me and I feel no need to speak or to turn

my head. The novelty of his presence makes no impression on me beyond a

feeling of surprise that I do not find it strange. When by chance we do

not hold the same view, the difference of opinion lasts only long enough

to shift the thought which we are considering, even as one shifts an

object to see its different aspects one after the other.

I came to the boarding-house this morning to see Rose. Her room was

empty. I was on the point of going, when the young man passed. He

recognised me, doubtless from the portraits which Rose had shown him;

and he came up to me of his own accord. His greeting was frank and

natural. There were breadth and spaciousness in his eyes and his smile

as well as in his manner. To justify my friendly interest, I pretended

to have heard about him from Rose as he himself had heard about me: that

is to say, with the most circumstantial details regarding position,

occupations and all the externals of life. He did not therefore enter

into explanations about things of which I was ignorant and we at once

began to talk without any formality.

What a strange and delightful sensation it was! I remembered all that I

had noticed about him the night before; I knew his character from

admiring its gentleness and patience under the supreme test of

unrequited love, of desire that awakened no response. And he was now

talking to me from the very depths of his soul, while I knew nothing of

who or what he was, nor of what he was doing here. I was really seeing

him from the inside, as we see ourselves behind the scenes of our own

existence, without ever knowing exactly the spectacle which we present

to others. I was observing the inner working of his life before I had

seen the outward presentment.

Speaking to me of his profession, he told me, with a smile, how little

importance he attached to his painting:

"It is only a favourable pretext for the life I have chosen. As you

know, my greatest passion is nature; and I cannot but like the work

which trained my eyes to a clearer vision and my nerves to a finer

response."

He told me of the years which he had wasted in seeking in the customary

amusements the joys which are ordinarily found there. He told me of the

life of luxury and idleness which he had led until the day came when

adverse fate reduced him to living on the income from a small estate

which he owned in the country: a thrice-fortunate day, he added, for

from that moment he had understood that he was made for solitude,

meditation and all the quiet pleasures of nature. Then he

enthusiastically described to me the peaceful charm of his little house

and he employed the words of a lover to extol the charm of his

willow-swept river and the wonders of his flowers and bees.

Then I wanted to know what he thought of Rose. He judged her not

inaccurately; but, with a lover's partiality, he applied the words

balance, gentleness, equanimity to qualities which one day, when the

scales had fallen from his eyes, he would call lack of heart and

feeling. Deep-seated differences, perhaps, but yet not of a nature to

affect the very sound principles that ensured his tranquillity.

He had no illusions as to the quality of her mind. But to him, as to

most men, a woman's intellectual value was but a relative factor; and he

did not pause to estimate it with any attempt at accuracy, preferring to

repeat:

"She will not disturb the silence of my life; and her beauty will adorn

it marvellously."

He had a way of speaking which I liked. He knew how to refine his words

by means of his expression. If they were very positive, his voice would

hesitate; if too grave, a faint smile would lighten their sombreness. If

he spoke ironically, his boyish eyes softened any touch of bitterness in

the wisdom of the satirist.

I did not like to think that the success of his wooing would mean the

end of his labours. Rose would never become the independent, perfect

woman of my dreams, capable of preserving her personal life in the midst

of love and in all circumstances. Alas, my ambition had soared too

high! Henceforth, I must wish nothing better for her than this purely

ornamental fate.

"Do you love her?" I asked.

"I was taken captive at once by her beauty," he answered. "She objected

that this sudden love must be an illusion; and I tried for a time to

think the same. But, before long, suffering taught me the sincerity of

my love. I dare not say whether it is senseless or right or usual; but,

as long as a feeling gives us nothing but joy, we are unable to

recognise it, we doubt it, we smile at it as a light and fleeting thing.

Let anguish come, however, with tears and dread; and it is as though the

seal of reality were placed on our heart. Then we believe in our love."

I repeated, pensively and happily:

"Do you really love her?"

"Yes, I can say so honestly."

He hesitated a little and, speaking very slowly, as though picking his

words from amid his memories, said:

"When we are sincere, we are bound to confess that the love which

encircles all the movements of our body follows the movements of its

strength or its weakness equally. It has its hours of exasperation, it

is sometimes a tide that rises and floods everything: the past, the

present, the future, the will, the spirit, the flesh. Then all becomes

peaceful; the waves subside and we think that we love no more. We do

love, however, but with a more detached joy. We have stepped outside

love, as it were, and we contemplate its extent."

My breath came quickly and my hands, clasped on the table, were pressed

close together. My heart was bursting with gladness for my Roseline. He

saw my emotion and questioned me with deeper interest.

I replied without hesitation:

"I am happy in this love which comes to Rose so simply and candidly."

He pressed my hand as he said:

"Sometimes, on reading certain passages in your letters, I used to fear

that you might be opposed to my intentions...."

I began to laugh:

"Yes, you will have read fine views concerning independence; and a

tirade against the women who surrender too easily; and any number of

things more or less contrary to your hopes. But do you not agree with me

that our principles are at their soundest when they are least rigid and

that our noblest convictions are those of which we see both sides at

once? Woman even more than man must not be afraid of handling her

morality a little roughly when occasion demands it, just as she

sometimes ruffles her laces for the pleasure of the eyes, easily and

naturally and without attaching too much importance to the matter."

He listens to my words as I listen to his, with surprised delight. We

feel as if we were playing with the same thought, for it flashes from

one life to the other without undergoing any alteration.

In point of fact, the human beings whom we see for the first time are

not always new to us. True, we have never seen each other before, but

our sympathies, our enthusiasms, inasmuch as they are common to both of

us, have met more than once; and, now that we are talking, the form of

our thoughts also corresponds, for, without intending it, we often look

at the most abstract things objectively, because he is a painter and I a

woman.

Oh, I know no more exquisite surprises than those chance meetings which

suddenly bring you a friend at a turning in life's road! It is like a

charming landscape which one has seen in a dream and which one now finds

in reality, without even having hoped for it. You speak, laugh,

recognise each other and above all you are astonished and go on being

astonished, adorably and shamelessly, like children.

What we had to say was all interwoven, as though we were both drawing on

the same memories. We were speaking of those friends of a day whom

accident sometimes gives us and whom the very briefness of the emotion

impresses deeply on our heart. They are there for ever, in a few clear,

sharp strokes, like sketches:

"For instance, you go on a matter of business to see somebody whom you

don't know. You chafe with annoyance as you cross the threshold. In

spite of the material duty which you are performing, you consider that

it is so much time wasted. Then, for some unknown reason, the atmosphere

seems kindly. You find familiar things in the room where you are

waiting: a picture which you might have chosen yourself, books which you

know and like, things which look as if your own hand had arranged them.

And you forget everything. With your forehead against the pane, you look

at the roofs of the houses, at the streets, at all that little scene

which is the constant companion of an existence which you do not know

and with which you are about to come into touch; and your heart beats

very fast, for a sort of foresight tells you that a friend is going to

enter the room."

"That's quite true; and sometimes even we have already met him at some

house or other; but then his mind displayed itself in a special

attitude, inaccessible, motionless, lifeless, like a thing in a glass

case. Now, we see him before us, in his own surroundings; and everything

is changed. He has a smile which is made of just the same quality of

affection as our own, a look instinct with the same sort of experience,

a laugh that cheerfully faces like dangers, a mind responding to the

same springs. And we talk and are contented and happy; and, when the sun

enters at the window or when the fire flickers merrily in the hearth, we

can easily picture spending the rest of our life there, in gladness and

comfort. Anything that the one says is received by the other with an

exclamation of delight. Yes, we have felt and seen things in the same

way; and this little fact, natural though it may seem, is so rare that

it appears extraordinary!"

With an abrupt movement that must be customary with him, my companion

shook his head to fling back his thick hair, which darkened his forehead

whenever he leant forward:

"And very often," he said, "you don't see each other again, or at least

you don't see each other like that, because time is too swift and

because everybody has to go his own road."

The bright shaft of sunlight was still between us. It came now from a

higher point of the little window. In the shimmering dust, I conjured up

the faces of scarce-seen friends. There were some whose features had

become almost obliterated; but beyond them, as one sees an image in a

crystal, I clearly perceived the ideas, the life, the soul that had for

a moment throbbed on exactly the same level as my own.

I replied, in a very low voice:

"We remain infinitely grateful to people who have given us such minutes

as those!"

And then, certain of hearing myself echoed, I cried, delightedly:

"Egoists should always be grateful and responsive, for gratitude is

nothing but happiness prolonged by thought...."

"Yes, that is the whole secret of the responsive soul: to have

sufficient impetus not to stop the sensation at the place where the joy

itself stops."

"To have simply, like the runner, an impetus that carries us beyond the

goal...."

Thus were our remarks unrolled like the links of one and the same chain;

and yet how different were our two existences! His was devoid of all

restlessness and agitation; and mine was still in need of it. His

intelligence was active, but not at all anxious to appear so. For him,

meditation was the great object; and, when I expressed my admiration of

a modesty impossible to my own undisciplined pride, he replied, in all

simplicity:

"Do not look upon this as modesty. The over-modest are often those whose

pride is too great to find room on the surface."

"If I were a man or an older woman than I am," I said, laughingly, "I

would choose your destiny; but, for the time being, I feel a genuine

need to satisfy my youth and to give it a few of the little pleasures

that suit it."

He tried to jest, like most men who disapprove of the trouble which we

take to please them by making ourselves prettier or more brilliant; but

at heart he was as fond as myself of feminine cajolery and frivolity.

"You are full of pride," I exclaimed, "when you have accomplished some

noble action or produced some rare work of art; then why should not

women be happy at realising in their persons consummate beauty and

grace? It is very probable that, if Plato or Socrates had suddenly been

turned into beautiful young creatures, their destiny would have been

different from what it was; it is even exceedingly probable that wisdom

would have prompted them very often to lay aside their writings and come

and contemplate their charms in the admiration of men!"

I quoted the words uttered by a woman who had known and loved admiration

in her day:

"If life were longer, I would devote as many hours to my body as I now

do to my mind; and I should be right. Unfortunately, I have to make a

choice; and my very love of beauty makes me turn to that which does not

fade...."

We should certainly have gone on talking for hours and without tiring;

but suddenly we both together remembered that Rose must be waiting for

me at my house and I rose to go.

As I did so, I said:

"I happen not to know your Christian name. What is it?"

"Floris."

Floris! That name, so little known in France but very frequent in

Holland, surprised me; and I had some difficulty in not saying:

"Then you are not a Frenchman?"

But all that I said was:

"Floris, you shall have your Rose!"

CHAPTER XII

Going down the stairs, I laughed to myself and said:

"It is really one of love's miracles, that that man should be interested

in Rose. And yet, to a philosopher, does not that beautiful girl offer a

very unusual sense of security? From the point of view of the life which

I had planned for her, she is a failure; but will she not be perfect in

the eyes of a lover, of a man who expects nothing from her but an

occasion for dreams and pleasure?"

Filled with gladness, I hastened my steps. Although it was the end of

winter, it was still freezing; and it was pleasant to hear the sound of

my feet on the hard ground. I also noticed the noises of the street:

they were sharp and distinct; and in the crisp air things were all black

and white, as though etched in dry-point.

For a moment, my dream vanished; then suddenly I became aware of it and

I rifled a shop of its flowers and jumped into a cab in order to be

with my Roseline the sooner.

Rose and Floris! The delicious combination filled my heart to

bursting-point. Is it not always some insignificant little accident that

sets our impressions overflowing? Like a child, at the last minute, I

had felt a wish to know what he was called; and I was delighted to find

that it was a name full of grace and colour. Now all my thoughts

clustered around those harmonious syllables. Those remarkable eyes, that

dark hair with its faint wave, that sensitive heart, that profound

intellect, powerful and yet a little tired, like a tree bowed down with

fruit: all this went through life under the name of Floris!

Then I saw once more his face, his gentleness, his profound charm; and I

never doubted the girl's secret assent. In my fond hope, I went to the

length of imagining that she had wished to choose her life for herself,

independent of my influence; that she had at last understood that, in

order to please me, she must first assert her liberty, without fear of

hurting or vexing me. It was an illusion, certainly; but there are

times when joy thrusts aside reason in order to burst into full blossom,

even as in moments of sorrow our despair often goes beyond reality to

drain itself to the last drop in one passionate outpouring.

Rose was sitting in the drawing-room, waiting for me. I rushed in like a

mad thing, without knowing what I was doing. My laughter, my flowers, my

words all came together and fell upon her like a shower of joy. In one

breath I told her of my indiscretion of the night before, of those

stolen sensations, of my anguish, of my life at a standstill, waiting on

theirs, of my delightful talk with Floris, of the sympathy between us

and lastly of my conviction that happiness was being offered to her here

and now.

Then I noticed that she said nothing; and, begging her pardon for my

incoherence, I tried to express in serious words the future that awaited

her. But all those glad impressions had dazzled me; I was like some one

who comes suddenly from the bright sunshine into a room. Shadows fell

and rose before my brain as before eyes that have looked too long at

the light; and I could do nothing but kiss her and repeat:

"Believe me, happiness lies there! Seize it, seize it!"

At last she murmured, wearily:

"No, I can't do it."

I questioned her, anxiously:

"Perhaps there is some obstacle that separates you? Do you dislike him?"

"No, I know his whole life and I have nothing against him."

"Well, then ...?"

I tried in vain to obtain a definite reply. Her soul was shut, walled

in, almost hostile. Was she refusing herself, as she had once given

herself, without knowing why? Or else was my vague intuition correct and

was a latent energy escaping from that little low, square forehead,

white and pure as a camellia, a force of which she herself was unaware

and which no doubt would one day reveal to me the final choice of her

life?

I made her sit down and, kneeling beside her, questioned her patiently

and gently as one asks a sick child to describe the pain which one is

anxious to relieve. Silently, gazing vaguely into space, she let

herself rest on my shoulder. The flowers fell from her listless hands.

Some still hung to her dress, with tangled stalks. Red carnations,

mimosa, tuberose, narcissus, hyacinths drunk with perfume, guelder-roses

and white lilac wept at her feet.

I rose slowly and looked at her, my heart aching for the heedless one

who dropped the joys which chance laid in her arms!

PART THE THIRD

CHAPTER I

The reason why we judge people better after a lapse of time is that,

when we look at them from a distance, there is no confusion of detail.

The main lines of their character stand out, relieved of the thousand

little alterations and erasures which the scrupulous hand of truth is

constantly making as it passes hither and thither, now rubbing out, now

redrawing, until at last the impression is no longer a very clear one.

From the day when I separated my life completely from the life of Rose,

her character appeared to me distinctly; and at the same time, now that

it was free to come down to its own level, it asserted itself in its

turn. Until that moment, while I had been careful to put no pressure

upon her, I had nevertheless been asking her to choose her tastes and

occupations on a plane that was unsuitable for her.

Her moral outlook was good, true and not at all silly, but it was

limited; and, in trying to make her see life swiftly and from above, as

though in a bird's-eye view, I had made it impossible for her to

distinguish anything.

Her fault was that she had not been able to change, mine was that I had

had too much faith in her possibilities. My optimism had wound itself

around her immobility and fastened to it, even as ivy coils around a

stone statue, without communicating to it the smallest portion of its

sturdy and luxuriant little life.

And now it is six months since we parted; and I am going to-day to see

her for the first time in her new existence.

I look out of the window of the railway-carriage; and my mind calls up

memories which glide past with the autumn fields. First comes the

departure of Floris, wearied by the incomprehensible attitude of the

girl. He went away shortly after our meeting, still philosophical and

cheerful, in spite of his disappointment. And the part which he played

in my experiment taught me something that guided my efforts into a fresh

direction: if Rose's beauty was to him sufficient compensation for her

commonplace character, could not I also accept the girl as something out

of which to weave romance and beauty? Does not everything lie in the

mere fact of consent? Passive and silent, would she not become a rare

object in my life, a precious stone?

"Woman blossoms into fullest flower by doing nothing," some one has

said. "Women who do not work form the beauty of the world."

I took Rose to live with me and for weeks devoted myself exclusively to

her appearance and her manners. I sought if possible to perfect the

exterior. It was all in vain. This beautiful creature was so totally

ignorant of what beauty meant that she was constantly deforming herself;

and I at last gave up the struggle.

Sadly I remember the last pulsation of my will. It happened in the

silence of my heart; and life went on for a little while longer. Would

it not have been hateful to send Rose away, as one dismisses a servant?

And what act, what fault had she committed to deserve such treatment?

When it would have been so sweet to me to give her everything, for no

reason at all, how could I find a solid reason for taking everything

from her?

So I said nothing to her; we had none of those horrible explanations

which set bristling spikes on the barriers--inevitable barriers,

alas!--which dissimilarities in taste or character raise between people.

There are certain persons who cannot bear to make any change without a

preliminary explanation. They seem to carry a sort of map in their

heads: on the far side of the frontier that borders the friendly

territory lies the enemy; and it needs but a word, a gesture, a

difference of opinion for you to find yourself in exile. Alas, have we

not enough with all the limits, demarcations, laws and judgments that

are perhaps necessary to the world at large? And must we lay upon

ourselves still others in the intimate relations of life?

I had no right to set myself up as a judge and I could not have

pronounced sentence. I waited. And, my will being no longer in the way,

circumstances gradually led my companion to her true destiny better than

I could have done.

She was bored. She was not really made to be a purely decorative object.

In spite of her trailing silk or velvet dresses, twenty times a day I

would find her in the larder, with a loaf under her arm and a knife in

her hand, contentedly buttering thick slices of bread, which she would

eat slowly in huge mouthfuls, looking straight before her as she did so.

She was bored; and I was powerless to cure this unfamiliar ill. I looked

out some work for her in my busy life. She wrote letters, kept my

accounts, hemmed the maids' aprons. Soon she was running the errands.

One day she answered the front-door.

I still remember that moment when she came and told me, in her pretty,

gentle way, that there was some one to see me in the drawing-room. I do

not know why, but that insignificant incident suddenly revealed the

truth to me. I was ashamed of myself and turned away my head so that she

should not see me blush. Poor child, she was unconsciously lowering

herself more and more daily. She was becoming my property. I was making

use of her.

Without saying anything, I at once began to search for something for

her. I hesitated between first one thing and then another; but at last

chance came to my aid. Country-bred as she was, the girl was losing her

colour in the Paris air; she was ordered to leave town. She knew a

family at Neufchatel, in Normandy, who were willing to take her as a

boarder for a few weeks. She went and did not come back.

What did she do there, how did she spend her time? She wrote to me

before long that she was quite happy, that she was earning her

livelihood without difficulty. There was a little linen-draper's shop,

it seemed, kept by an old maid, who, having no relations of her own, had

taken Rose to assist her at first and perhaps to succeed her in time.

I was not at all surprised. For that matter, when we follow the natural

evolution of things, their conclusion comes so softly that we hardly

notice it. It is the descent which we are approaching: it becomes less

steep at every step and, when we reach it, it is only a faint depression

in the ground.

Strange temperament! The more I think of it, the more it appears to me

as an instance of the dangers of virtue, or at least of what we

understand by the word. Does it not look as though, in the charts of our

characters, the virtues are the ultimate goals which can be reached only

by the way of our faults? Each virtue stands like a golden statue in the

centre of a cross-roads. We can hardly know every side of it unless we

have beheld it from the various paths that lead to it. It shines in a

different manner at the end of each road.

Rose never became conscious of her good qualities, because she possessed

them too naturally; and she remained poor in the midst of all the riches

which she was unable to discern.

Oh, if only she had been less wise and had had that ardour, that flame

which feeds on all that is thrown upon it to extinguish it; if she had

had that inordinate prodigality which teaches us by making us commit a

thousand acts of folly; if, in short, she had had faults, vices,

impulses of curiosity, how different her fate would have been! The

equilibrium of a person's character may be compared with that of a pair

of scales; and it is safe to say that, by weighing more heavily upon one

of these, our defects raise our good qualities to their highest level.

But every minute is now bringing me nearer to this life which I am at

last to know; and I gaze absent-mindedly at the Bray country, that

lovely country red with the gold of autumn. By force of habit, my

nerves spell out a few sensations which my thoughts do not put into

words. My heart is beating. Now, with no idea or purpose in my mind, I

am speeding with a full heart towards the girl who was at least the

inspiration of a splendid hope and above all an incentive to action.

CHAPTER II

I arrived at Neufchatel at the gracious hour when the sun is paling; and

I was at once charmed with the kindly aspect of this little Norman town.

The house-fronts gleaming with fresh paint, the pigeons picking their

way across the streets, the grass growing between the cobble-stones, the

flowers outside the windows and doors, a cleanliness that adorns the

smallest details: all this is so calm and so empty that our life at once

settles there as in a frame that takes with equal ease the happy or the

sad picture which we propose to fit into it.

It reminds me of Bruges, whose infinite, patient calm is a clean page on

which the visitor's life is printed, happy or distressful at will, since

there is nothing to define its character. It also has the silence of the

little Flemish towns, with their streets without carriages or wayfarers.

The gardens look as though they were artificial; and in the frame of

the open windows we see interiors which are as sharp as pictures.

Leading out of the main street is a mysterious little alley, dark and

badly paved. It runs upwards and ends in a clump of trees arching

against the blue of the sky. There is no visible gate or doorway. I turn

up it. All along a high wall hang old fire-backs, bas-reliefs of

cracked, rusty-red iron, once licked by the flames, now washed by the

rain.

I loiter to examine the subjects: coats of arms, trophies of weapons, or

allegories and half-obliterated love-scenes. It is curious to see these

homely relics thus exposed in the street, conjuring up the peaceful soul

of families gathered round the hearth. From over the wall, the air

reaches me laden with hallowed fragrance. I picture the box-bordered

walks on the other side.

Then I climb higher; and, when I come to the trees, I find a charming

surprise. The public gardens lie in front of me. In the shade of the

public gardens we seem to find the very spirit of a town; it is to the

gardens or to the church that our curiosity always turns in the first

place. Here is the walk edged with stone benches on which old men and

old women sit coughing and gossiping; here mothers bring their work,

while their children run about; and in the centre, at the junction of

the paths, is the platform where the regimental band plays on Sundays.

The Neufchatel gardens are in no way elaborate: a number of avenues have

been cut out of an ancient wood; and that is all. There are no shrubs;

just a patch of dahlias, with a ridiculous little iron railing round

them. But its whole charm lies in its picturesque situation up above the

town. In between the tall trees with their interlacing boughs, one can

see the slopes of the hills, the plains, the meadows, the gleaming roofs

and the church with its twin spires piercing the blue of the sky. Then,

in the foreground, I see, behind the houses, the little gardens whose

breath reached me just now. They are there, divided into small plots of

equal size, simple or pretentious, sometimes humble kitchen-gardens, but

sometimes also a patchwork adorned with grottoes, arbours and glass

bells.

Rose mentioned a garden which brightens her little home. Suppose it were

one of these!... A woman appears over there: she is tall and

fair-haired. She stoops over a well; I cannot make out her features. She

draws herself up again. Oh, no, her figure is clumsy, her hair looks

dull and colourless and her clothes vulgar. Rose would never dress like

that, in two colours that clash! Rose would never ...

I wander into a delicious reverie. How infinitely superior Rose is to

all these people whose lives I can picture around me. Two women sit

cackling beside me on the bench: they are at once guileless and bad,

with their mania for eternally wagging tongues that know no rest. A

little farther on, a good housewife is shaking her troublesome child; a

stout, overdressed woman of the shop-keeping class is flaunting her

finery down one of the walks; a priest passes and, while his lips mumble

prayers, his eyes, held in leash by fear, prowl around me; one of his

flock curtseys to the ground as she meets him.

A protest rises in my heart at each of the little incidents: is not Rose

rid of all that? Rose long ago gave up going to mass and confession. She

has lost the hypocritical sense of shame, knows neither envy nor malice

and is a stranger to all ostentation.

I often used to reproach her with her extreme humility. How wrong I was!

I now think that this humility can achieve the same result as pride

itself. One looks too high, the other too low; but both pass by the

petty vanities of life and either of them can keep us equally

indifferent to those vanities.

I rose from my seat with a happy heart. The time had come for me to go

in search of her. I would kiss her in all gratitude. Had she not

enlarged my will to the extent of making it admit her little existence?

I went through the silent streets, in search of the charming, old-world

name that was to tell me where the aged spinster lived. Rose had said

that I should see it written over the door in blue letters and that it

was opposite a place where they sold sportsmen's and anglers'

requisites, a shop with a sign that would be certain to attract my

attention.

I therefore walked along with a sure step and suddenly, at a

street-corner, saw a great silver fish flashing to and fro in the breeze

at the end of a long line. Soon I was in a quiet backwater of the town.

There it was! Opposite me, the last gleams of the setting sun shed their

radiance on a very bright little house covered with a luxuriant vine. On

one side, in the same golden light, the name of Isaline Coquet smiled

in sky-blue letters.

The shop was white, with pearl-grey shutters; and on the ledges were

bunchy plants gay with pink, starry flowers. In the window, a few

starched caps looked as if they were talking scandal on their respective

stands.

I walked in. The opening of the door roused the tongue of a little rusty

bell, but nobody came. On a big grandfather's chair, near the counter,

were a pair of spectacles and a book. Perhaps Mlle. Coquet had run away

when she caught sight of me through the panes; Rose said that she was

shy and a little frightened at the thought of my coming visit. And I had

the pleasure of looking for my Rose as I followed the mysterious turns

of a primitive passage.

The walls were spotless and the red-tiled floor shone in the half-light.

I crossed a neat little kitchen, just as a cuckoo-clock was chiming

five, and found myself on the threshold of a small room opening on a

garden. Rose was sitting in the wide, low window.

The noise of the clock no doubt deadened the sound of my steps, for the

girl did not turn her head. The room exhaled a faint perfume as of

incense and musk; and I seemed to hold all her peaceful little life in

my breath and in that swift glance. All that I could see of her face was

one cheek and the tips of her long eyelashes. Placed as she was in front

of the light, a golden haze shaded the colours of her beautiful hair;

and I lingered in contemplation of the long and graceful curve of her

figure bending over her work. She was sewing in the midst of floods of

stiff white muslin, which formed a chain of snow-clad peaks with blue

reflections around her. I looked at the low-ceilinged room with its

whitewashed wall and its rows of bodices, petticoats and shiny caps

hanging on lines stretched from one side to the other. A grey tom-cat

lay purring on a corner of the table; and, near it, in a well-scrubbed

pot, a pink geranium displayed its sombre leaves and its bright flowers.

Rose was sewing. At regular intervals, her right arm rose, drew out the

thread and returned to the spot whence it started: an even and captive

movement symbolical of the amount of activity permitted to women! But

was she not to choose that movement among all others?

We dine in her bedroom. What a surprise her room held in store for me!

Rose had arranged it herself, in harmony with the simplicity which I

loved.

Brightly-painted wooden shelves make patches of colour on the white

walls; the furniture is rustic; and the curtains of white muslin with

mauve spots complete the frank and artless harmony of the room. How

little this was to be expected from Mlle. Coquet's shop!

Then, on Rose's table, the books I gave her fill the place of honour. I

dare say that she never reads them; and yet I am glad to see them here.

Rose goes to and fro between our little table and the kitchen. She looks

pretty, she smiles. The slowness of her movements is no longer

lethargic; it simply exhales an air of repose, a perfume of peace that

suits her beauty. Her eyes have fastened on me at once and, as in the

old days, never leave me.

Is it the tyranny of habit that used to prevent me from reading anything

in them? Now, those eyes that ingenuously drink in my life as the

flowers do the light, those eyes not veiled by any shadow, constantly

bring the tears to mine. She sees this and fondly lays her head on my

shoulder, whispering:

"I did nothing but expect you, darling, only I had given up hoping...."

This term of endearment, which she addresses to me for the first time,

as if, being no longer subject to any effort, she were at last yielding

to the sweets of friendship, this expression and my Christian name,

which she utters lovingly, complete the pleasantness of the evening.

I feel happy amid it all. We who were brought up in the country never

lose our appreciation of its peaceful charm. It bows down our lives as

we bow our forehead in our hands to think beyond our immediate

surroundings; and from its narrow circle we are better able to judge the

expanse which has become necessary to us.

The night rises, things fade away. The sky is a deep blue in the frame

of the open window. Rose brings the lamp:

"It was the first companion of my solitude," she says, reminiscently;

then, laughing, "the companion of my boredom, the companion of those

long, long evenings...."

"But now, dearest?..."

"Ah, now, the days are too short: I have a thousand duties to perform,

my dear little old woman to look after, my customers, my flowers, my

animals; then, in the evening, we often have a caller: the priest, the

notary, the neighbours...."

Then, suddenly fearing that she has hurt me, she adds, in a caressing

tone:

"When I am with them, I am always talking about you, so as to comfort

myself for the loss of you; for that is my only sorrow."

An hour or two later, sitting in the garden, we watched the stars

appearing one by one. Our arms were round each other; our fair tresses

were intermingled. We were at the far end of the town. We heard the

sounds of the country ringing in the transparent air; and the crystal

voice of the frogs, that small, clear note falling steadily and marking

time to our thoughts. We were quiet, like everything around us,

unstirred by a breath of wind.

Rose spoke of her happiness; and I never wearied of inhaling that

delicious tranquillity. I had been thinking of settling her future for

her. And what an inestimable lesson I was learning from her! Rose was

one of those whose road must be marked from hour to hour by a little

duty of some kind or another. It is thus, by limiting themselves, that

these characters arrive at knowing and asserting themselves. She said,

blithely, "my room," "my garden," "my house;" and I smiled as I

reflected that I had once struggled to rid that mind of all useless

bonds.

What a mistake I had made! In order to find her life, she had had to

earn it and to recognise it in the very things that now belonged to it,

to mark every hour of it with humdrum tasks, to create for herself

little troubles on her own level, difficulties which her good sense

could easily overcome. There was nothing unexpected, nothing

far-reaching in her life, never an event beyond the tinkle of the

shop-bell announcing a customer, a little bell with a short, sharp,

cracked ring, stopping on a single note without vibration, as though it

were the very voice of the little souls which it excited.

In contrast with this humble destiny, I considered my own full of

difficulty and agitation, so crowded and yet doubtless equally empty; I

followed in my mind's eye the lives of my friends; and I reflected that

the nature of us women, alike of the most wayward and the most direct,

is too delicate and too complex for us easily to keep our balance in a

state of complete liberty.

"When we achieve it," I said to Rose, "it is thanks to a close and

constant observation of ourselves; for woman never has any real moral

strength. Self-sacrifice and kindness alone lend us some, because our

capacity for loving knows no limit: our strength is then a loan which we

make to ourselves at difficult moments by a miracle of love. Once the

crisis is over, we have to pay ... with interest!"

"In Paris," said Rose, "even from the very first, I had a feeling that I

should never dare to move in the absolute liberty that was offered me.

You are not angry with me?"

"How could I be? We were both wanderers, you and I, where circumstances

led us, both of us with a passion for sincerity, both of us with the

best of intentions. A cleverer mind than mine would doubtless have

saved you from going out of your way. It had many unnecessary turnings.

But perhaps they had their uses...."

"Yes," replied my friend, wisely, "for without them, I should not have

been so certain that my choice was right...."

Around us the mysterious life of the night was gradually awaking. All

the animals that shun the daylight were beginning to stir. A hedgehog

brushed against my skirt. In the grass, two glowworms summoned love with

all their fires. The smell of the garden became overpowering. Our

movements and our words throbbed in a scented air. Rose leant towards

me:

"There is one thought that troubles me," she said. "Have I discouraged

you? Will others better equipped than I still find you ready to lend

them a helping hand?"

"Why not, Roseline?" And I would have liked to put my very soul into the

kiss which I gave her. "No, you have not discouraged me. The only thing

that matters is to have the power to choose what suits us. Then alone

is it possible for us to develop ourselves without restraint. With your

limited horizon, you are freer, darling, than when you were living with

me, at the mercy of all the fancies which you did not know how to use.

Everything is relative; and instinct makes no mistakes. Yours, by

placing you here among the lives which I can imagine, gives you the

opportunity of excelling. You felt that you needed to live under

conditions in which the effort and the merit would lie in not changing,

in which action would be immobility. You know, Rose, there is always

some common ground in human beings; to reach it, if you do not stoop,

the others will raise themselves. With your beauty which is the wonder

of every one you meet, with that gentleness which wins all hearts and

with your soul which no longer knows either malice or prayer, you will

be a new example of life to all around you."

Rose was sitting on a higher chair than mine; and this allowed me to let

my head sink into her lap. I no longer dreamt of looking at the

splendour of the night, for was it not throbbing in my heart, where a

star woke every moment? And I thought out loud:

"You were always asking me the object of my efforts. Do you now

understand that I could not explain what I myself did not understand

perfectly until you revealed it to me?"

I reflected for a moment and continued:

"We can wish nothing for others nor force anything on them: we can only

help them to clear the field before and within themselves...."

She murmured:

"I understand."

And I cried:

"Ah, my dearest, how grateful I am to you! In looking for you, I have

found myself a little more; and it is always so; and that, you see, is

why we must love action. However tiny, however humble, it may be, it

brings us at the same time the knowledge of others and of ourselves. We

appear to fling ourselves stout-heartedly into the stream whose currents

we cannot foresee; we are hurt, we are wounded, we struggle; but, when

we return to the bank, we feel invigorated and refreshed."

Roseline stroked my forehead lightly with her hands and softly

whispered:

"There was nothing lacking to my peace of mind but your approval. Now I

am happy and I can begin my life without anxiety."

CHAPTER III

Rose was still asleep when I entered the drowsy bedroom to bid her

good-bye. A small, heart-shaped opening in the middle of the shutters

allowed the first ray of daylight to penetrate. Sleeping happily and

trustfully, with streaming hair and hands out-flung, she lay strewn like

the petals of a flower. I laid my lips on hers and softly went away.

As I climb the slope that leads out of Neufchatel, I turn and look down

once more on the little town that slumbers everlastingly in its rich

peace. Just there, by the church, I picture the house with its grey

shutters, its white front and its starched caps behind the flower-pots.

Beyond, the green horizons and the blue hill-sides stand clearly marked

in the dawning sun; and I gaze and gaze as far as my eyes can see,

through my lashes sparkling with tears.

For all her lethargy, her slumber as of a beautiful plant, the soul of

my Rose is wholesome, wholesome as those meadows, those fields, all that

good Norman earth which gave her to me miserable only to take her back

happy and free. Certainly, Rose has not been able to achieve the

strength that makes use of liberty: in that life, still so young, the

will is a dead branch through which the sap no longer flows. At any

rate, what she does possess she will not lose; she is one of those who

instinctively hold in their breath so as not to tarnish the pane through

which a glimpse of infinity stands revealed to them. Her soul could not

take in unlimited happiness, it had to feel a touch of sorrow in order

to taste a little joy. There are many like her, people who perceive that

the light is good when they come out of the darkness, but who are not

able to recognise the light in the radiant beauty of the noon-day

fields.

The sun rises as I slowly make my way up-hill; the wood along the road

is still wet with the dawn. It offers me its autumnal fragrance; I

breathe it in, I gaze at its golden tints, I think of Rose, of her past

and her future. But, beyond my dreams, an unformed idea seems to spread

like a clear sky, without outline, without colour, without beginning or

end; and I have a secret feeling that I shall try again.

I shall go towards other strangers. I shall seek at random among hearts

and souls! Fearlessly, in spite of censure and derision, I shall lavish

my confidence in order to win that of others. I shall not linger over

the vain pleasure of discovering the traces of my power. We can pour out

our influence boldly: it is a wine that excites no two souls in a like

manner; and we are always ignorant what the nature of the intoxication

will be, whether fruitful or barren, blithe or cheerless.

I shall go towards other strangers; I understand now that my sole

ambition is to bring life within their reach. What matter what their

thoughts, their loves, their wishes, if at least they have acquired the

taste and the means of thinking, loving and wishing?

Shall I ever succeed in evolving from this passion of mine a method, a

system that will make my action less blind and uncertain? I think not.

In a life that never offers us anything logical or foreseen, our moral

nature must needs resemble a drapery that is folded backwards and

forwards over events, souls or circumstances. Let us ask no more than

that it be beautiful and soft, strong and light, submissive to the

least breath and ready to be transformed at its command. Nothing but an

essential principle of humanity and loving-kindness can serve as a

foundation for our actions, without ever confining them.

On the one hand, we have effort, nearly always vain; on the other,

knowledge, which is the second look that makes us discern the ordinary,

the commonplace, where at first we beheld beauty and charm.

Nevertheless, let us worship effort and knowledge above all things.

Let us act as simply as the little wave that lifts itself and breaks

against the rock. Others come after it; and it is their light kisses

which, all unseen, end by biting into the granite.

It is a dull, drab winter's day. There is no colour, no light in the sky