rd that was pregnant with storms which might break suddenly from a
clear sky? Wasn't it more like her own love? I was at a loss how to
answer. Still I could not recognize ourselves. She clutched me and
laughingly declared I was a little savage, and my being a little savage
pleased her.

We came to where the country takes a sudden dip, so that to be visible
to the heavens it has to cling to the bronzed trunks of the
half-stripped cork-trees. We went on breasting the wind. I knitted my
brows. Everything she said breathed, at least to me, another age or
another sphere; it all hinged on love, was dedicated to love, and by
that very fact created a distance between us. I saw her cramped and
confined by the very thing that gave her so much vitality; I saw it was
her crucifixion. She was nothing but the instinct for love restricted to
the need of man. Nevertheless she attracted me.

We got to know each other better. She astonished me more and more.
Whether she and her lover carried on a squally conversation on the bench
in the hall or whether she wandered along the narrow, brambly paths in a
sort of ferocious abandon, or whether she came to me and threw her
thorny crown at my feet with a radiant gesture, she was Woman as men
have described her, as they have wanted her. She was the ancient bearer
of a fatal property, the creature who either subdues her opponent or is
subdued by him, and knows nothing else; the sorry creature of tears and
fascinations....

She never spoke of her life or of herself. We were two women, our lot
therefore was the same, she was in love, I was in love. What else need
one want?

"Good-bye for the present," she cried as the cart set off down the road
at a snail's pace. She stood with her head inclined tenderly sidewise
and her floating veil prolonging the farewell.... There was a bend in
the road. I thought that was to be my last view of her.

But a little while ago as I was going to lie down, an imperious ring
tore the silence. Actually she, her smile, her veil, her dress a tangle
of silver.

"What a pretty little nest! How comfortable you must be! Well, well.
Still happy?"

And then--there!--her laugh with a little savagery in it. She notices
that I am expecting a baby. "Well, of all things!" She throws her gloves
into the air, seats herself, gets up again, and from her hectic
restlessness I infer that she feels defrauded. My home is too cozy and
my manner too tranquil. Not, of course, that sh