line of my foremothers. Why should I be different? What
quality would make me better?

The animal heaviness reasserts its rights. My body is an unwieldy sheath
overspread with sleepiness, ramified by thick blood, its cells given
over to contented, torpid well-being. My very heart is struck with
stupor.

To lie at full length, on my bed beneath the weight of my breasts of
rock, no longer to move or think, only to feel at momentary intervals a
light stirring, a caress, which gently turns on its self and folds its
wings.

XI

I scarcely dare to get up. She knew me in my slenderness of the previous
summer, when I took the torrid paths like a goat leaping dangerous
mountain tracks. It was from my brisk manner of ready, go! she told me,
that she could tell how warm our love was.

We were living in the same inn. The very first day I was struck by the
blooming youthfulness of this woman who so skilfully escaped the burden
of the forties and constantly trailed a lover, a lover with a vindictive
eye and bullish neck and forehead. Perhaps on close inspection you might
suspect the fine tracery of wrinkles on her transparent skin.
Nevertheless she shone resplendent as we younger women don't know how to
shine.

Black on white, a head surcharged with mystery and night, two jewels,
no, two green pools, a mouth that revealed the shape of a kiss better
than other mouths, a figure not very tall but with a race and suppleness
which lent dignity. Clothes planned to reveal the curves of her body.
Movements kindling I know not what lights. Woman, in short, with all a
woman has in her of the venomous and the childlike.

We sat directly opposite each other at table. The charm of her vivid
smile, glowing face, and darting movements turned the frugal meal for me
into a riotous feast.

One morning as I was starting out on a walk by myself for nowhere in
particular she came up to me in an easy spontaneous way, as if there
really did exist a sisterhood among women. Part of her loveliness was a
deep, maternal voice; in crystal tones she plunged into a surprising
eulogy of the relationship between my husband and me. She had noticed
us. How perfectly united we must be! "Married? Absurd!" She pouted. But
we had such a way of locking arms, and looking and waiting for each
other, also such a....

She went on talking and talking. I was rather bewildered.... Was it
really _us_ she was describing--sombre with passion, eagerly relishing a
conco