ust stopping short of using their index fingers, as
an example of a happy couple. They speak enviously of our great good
fortune as if we were bound on an adventurous voyage on which you embark
only once in your life.

What do their "young couple," their "happy pair" mean? Do people really
imagine that you arrive at happiness so quickly and easily, and that to
be sent off _together_ into the steep mountain country, life is in
itself enough to make you find the fulness of life?

Happy!... When everything tends to estrange you, the opposite natures of
man and woman, their conflicting interests, their very physical
attraction for each other. Happy! When you realize that two beings,
however close they may be, are forever divided. When, no matter how free
you are, marriage forces you to restrain and prostrate yourself. When,
apart from your joint life, you have your own career to pursue. And
when, after the day's work is accomplished, come the night's kisses as
if to undo the good of the day's work--behold the body, the blood, the
lips of love--and you change from friends into lovers again.

To be sure, there are occasionally moments of blinding delight, and it
is sweet to lean on a shoulder and have a second in the duel of life and
be with a man who smiles and takes you in his arms.

But to be happy! To feel that your measure is filled, that you are
yourself and him.... Man and woman are above all enemies; you feel it at
every turn. And yet you tell yourself that at the heart of some
inaccessible firmament there does exist a sublime harmony and it _must_
be attained, even if the road to it is superhuman and your strength
fails. And this harmony and this road must be taken afresh every day, if
ever one approaches them, for a human being changes from day to day.

I am already somewhat stronger and simpler, and somewhat appeased, but
still we are not "happy" as yet.

VIII

It is true; she was sincere....

While talking she cast off her enormous furs and fiddled with her rings
in the unconscious wish to remove them. Her restless head was set high
on a neck encircled by pearls. Minus the litter of ornaments she would
have tempted you to hold your hand out to her.

The landscape, swallowed up in long gulps by the window of the
railway-coach, had a sombre fascination for her, because it was moving
almost as fast as her pain. You saw her shoulders gradually shrink
together and slowly draw down the beautiful column of fl