I do not know what I felt, or whence those fears came which so suddenly
assailed me, and took possession of my whole being like a flight of
poisoned arrows. The nearer the day approached that I am so ardently
longing for, on which Elaine would take my name and belong to me, the
more anxious, nervous and tormented by the uncertainty of the morrow, I
feel.
I love, and I am passionately loved, and few couples start on the
unknown journey of a totally new life and enter into matrimony with such
hopes, and the same assurance of happiness, as we two.
I have such faith in the girl I am going to marry, and have made her
such vows of love, that I should certainly kill myself without a
moment's hesitation if anything were to happen to separate us, to force
us to a correct but irremediable rupture, or if Elaine were seized by
some illness which carried her off quickly; and yet I hesitate, I am
afraid, for I know that many others have made shipwreck, lost their love
on the way, disenchanted their wives and have themselves been
disenchanted in those first essays of possession, during that first
night of tenderness and of intimacy.
What does Elaine expect in her vague innocence, which has been lessened
by the half confidences of married friends, by semi-avowals, by all the
kisses of this sort of apprenticeship which is a court of love; what
does she possess, what does she hope for? Will her refined, delicate,
vibrating nature bend to the painful submission of the initial embrace;
will she not rebel against that ardent attack that wounds and pains? Oh!
to have to say to oneself that it must come to that, to lower the most
ideal of affections, to think that one is risking one's whole future
happiness at such a hazardous game, that the merest trifle might make a
woman completely ridiculous or hopeful, and make an idolized woman laugh
or cry!
I do not know a more desirable, prettier or more attractive being in the
whole world than Elaine; I am worn out by feverish love, I thirst for
her lips and I wish every particle of her being to belong to me; I love
her ardently, but I would willingly give half that I possess to have got
through this ordeal, to be a week older, _and still happy_!...