old and gray like the feet of a
pauper, your skin is bloated, worms are preying upon you. I don't want
to--I cannot see you as you are. When I think of you I have a false
vision of your living self with your cheeks of the color of life and
your dear natural gestures. How can I help being all bewildered? Nothing
is left. Even the memory of you changes from day to day. I can no longer
recall the right tone of your voice. Your corpse is hidden. It is as if
I were suffering for no reason at all.

Not to know how to suffer, perhaps that is what suffering is.... Not to
divine where you are, is that your death?

The sparkling hearth-fire has scattered and gone out. Fire has devoured
fire. A few embers reddening here and there, a porous heap of fanciful
firebrands.

And now, and now, my beloved, if I no longer see you, I do see the
consuming truth. I see it and here it is: I let you go. I consented.
There's no doubt of it, it was _I_ who killed you....

X

I felt a great need for fresh air and light. What the nature of this
hunger and thirst was I cannot tell.... The sunshine suddenly lighted up
the window-frame. Its golden rays coming through the open casement and
falling obliquely upon the objects in my room filled it with numerous
fires. It was a salute.

To be out of doors, to walk, to feel the sun on my skin!

I had a letter to mail. The thought of it brought me to my feet,
impatient, ready.

Should I take the little one along? But how about a good long walk, the
semblance of distraction?... I decided to go alone.

With my eyes close to the image in the mirror, I powdered my face and
puffed my hair on each side under my hat as I used to do. How the least
prinking helps a woman! Instead of the really ugly pointed little face
smeared with pallor, which, without arousing my shame, had visibly
lengthened these past weeks, there was a face of warm, even whiteness
and of an oval not so pronounced, eyes which, even if dark-rimmed, had
lost their fixity, and a shower of red tendrils like coppery breaths
blown on my forehead.

The early spring was making itself felt. A raw wind was raising the dust
of the streets. Assailed at the first step by the blue, dancing,
swirling air, I walked falteringly, like a prisoner who has just been
released and doesn't know where to turn.

Everything the same. The old bridge still stretching its badly joined
planks from the paved street to the road where the wistaria bloomed. The
pa