love and truth, our
words were so vast that we had to stop talking.

"This evening--do you know why?--instead of telling their splendid
secret my words are mere splinters ripping my throat.... Yet when we
used to talk here, I did not know love was so beautiful; we did not say
it was.

"You certainly saw the change in me, and you guessed. The morning when
you stopped in front of me and restrained the exclamation in your
breast, I was sure you knew. Perhaps it was very apparent. I came and
went in a radiance; the house grew chilly, everything in the house was
conscious of it and unnatural. Evenings I worked later and later, as if
I were afraid of falling asleep, and when we discussed things, it was I
who explained, I who knew. You must have seen, too, how often I buried
myself in silence, content in it sometimes, then tortured.

"You observed me. There was no reason for speaking one day rather than
another?

"A reason has arisen.

"It was yesterday evening. Walking beside him I suddenly realized that
in him, in us, in me, there was a sort of attraction; I responded to
it--with all the strong, fine need of truth you gave me. It is this need
of truth which brings me to you this evening.

"Take it, take it before giving it back to me. Don't let us ask whether
it is more painful for you who receive it than for me who bestow it. Let
us forget that man retains the proud authority of the male in his flesh
and says "possess" as of a thing. Don't let us ask whether the union
between man and woman is sublime to this degree. Let ours take that
stand. One always has the time to suffer in, but there is only one time
in which to love in truth.

"See, maybe it is at this very moment when my voice is worn threadbare
and in spite of yourself you push my head away and hold yourself up as
if you were about to fall, that we draw closer together than ever
before.

"You are watching the night as it comes creeping ... you see, don't you?
There is no question, not for a moment, of parting, nor of my loving you
less. Because our hearts are turned towards each other to-day. A miracle
is taking place. It will not be undone.

"Listen to me. Listen to me as if you could understand. Let me spread at
your feet the infinity I hold.... Since he came, if you only knew, I
love you more. Not only do I feel your smile and your whole presence
around me like a thousand arms and with even more than one heart, but I
feel surer of myself, nobler, and-