itive child, to whom I did not know what
to say, and whose sudden questions disconcerted me!

She is coquettish, and there is seduction in her attitudes, in her
gestures, in her laugh and in her touch. One might think that she was
trying her power over me, and that she guesses that I no longer have any
will of my own. She does with me whatever she likes, and I am quite
incapable of resisting the beautiful charm that emanates from her, and I
feel carried away by her caressing hands, and so happy that I am at
times frightened at the excess of my own felicity.

My life now passes amidst the most delicious of punishments, those
afternoons and evenings that we spend together, those unconstrained
moments when, sitting on the sofa together, she rests her head on my
shoulder, holds my hands and half shuts her beautiful eyes while we
settle what our future life shall be, when I _cover_ her with kisses and
inhale the odor of all those little hairs that are as fine as silk and
are like a halo round her imperial brow, excite me, unsettle me, kill
me, and yet I feel inclined to shed tears, when the time comes for us to
part, and I really only exist when I am with Elaine.

I can scarcely sleep; I see her rise up in the darkness, delicate, fair
and pink, so supple, so elegant with her small waist and tiny hands and
feet, her graceful head and that look of mockery and of coaxing which
lies in her smile, that brightness of dawn which illuminates her looks,
that when I think that she is going to become my wife, I feel inclined
to sing, and to shout out my amorous folly into the silence of the
night.

Elaine also seems to be at the end of her strength, has grown languid
and nervous; she would like to wipe out the fortnight that we still have
to wait, and so little does she hide her longing, that one of her
uncles, Colonel d'Orthez, said after dinner the other evening: "By Jove,
my children, one would take you for two soldiers who are looking forward
to their furlough!"

PART III

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