e that our humanity is strangely
new.

When she returns to her and her husband's orderly, flower-decked room,
what a life she will stir up; what creative power, what inspiration,
what harmony she will contribute to their relation.

* * * * *

Will she and I succeed in producing that supreme masterpiece known as
friendship? Friendship between two women used to seem almost impossible
to me. I have always seen women leagued against man. They meet only to
connive, and when they meet, humanity divides into two camps with the
woman's camp almost wholly devoted to the concoction of plots and lies.
Two women together? Two enemies confronting each other. If they cease
from their rivalry, it is in order to set traps for male weakness.

* * * * *

She turns round. "Quick, we ought to be back already." Her smile is so
confiding and my heart so happy, she is so radiant, so wholesome and her
presence is so forceful that some day, I say to myself, the name of
friendship will have to be the same as of love.

XVI

An arbor at the water's edge. Cool green leaves. Flowers. Boughs striped
with sunshine. Close by, the peacefulness of a sleepy stream.

We had decided to celebrate our second wedding anniversary here. We rose
early in the morning, set out arm in arm, keeping step, and came to
this springtime nook as if to a rendezvous arranged by spring itself.

The setting for our lunch was all it should be--the midday sun blazing
down upon the surrounding country, the table garlanded with flowers, the
scenery framed in the arch of the arbor.

Two years....

The afternoon passed tranquilly.

He was seated close beside me. I saw his profile against the bank and
the misty line where the horizon was falling asleep. His wandering gaze
was caught by everything and rested on nothing. He seemed to be summing
up each breath of nature, each line, each feature, and he had eyes
only--this being a day apart from other days--for the broad effects of
the great stretch of landscape.

A halt. We count on our fingers, we hold a mental roll-call before
turning back.... Presently, when we start on our homeward walk, the
great amphitheatre of vapors, the slope fringed with trees, the belt of
mist will each one by one be making their quivering signs.

* * * * *

Two years. What has my love become, my hope, the spirit without end
which dwelt within me?