ly the pains I take for him, or my perpetual anxiety. I am welded to
him by the kisses he already gives me. When he says "Mamma" in his
inimitable way, I am proud and overwhelmed; when he puts his arms round
my neck, it is as if I were usurping a reward too perfect for me.

The terror with which he filled me when he was so little and frail is
disappearing. I have rocked him, watched over him and suckled him; he
has strong legs and a strong body; nevertheless a much greater terror is
growing in me.

The greatest terror of my life. To bring up a child, to hold in your
hands not only what he will be, but what he may be; and to decree
everything, the colors he looks at, the words he hears! To give birth a
second time to a living creature. To be worthy of it....

And to have nothing to help you but a heart wise yet too intellectual,
the heart of an adult.

To have this timid heart, the maternal heart, too prompt and misleading.

Not to have anything else!

XII

I was sitting on the grass beside the rugged, windswept path which
follows the curve of the sea. Instinctively I straightened up out of my
careless attitude into the attitude of a woman in danger.

He is coming closer, he is very near....

He forces himself to assume the indifferent, I don't-know-you air of
some one happening to be passing by, but he shortens his strides, and in
spite of himself his face dilates and beams with the delight of the
hunter striking the trail. A little more, and he'd let out a whistle.

Should I try to escape through the woods by cutting across the railroad
track? Should I?...

"How do you do?"

"How do you do?"

The man is handsome, decidedly handsome, even in the full light, and I
smile at his coming as I smiled a few moments ago when the sun climbed
over the slope.

I had always seen him in the dusk when he returned to his smart white
house held fast in a coil of green. He would stop a moment at the rusty
gate and give me a lingering glance out of his long-lashed eyes.
Yesterday evening when we passed each other on the road, his eyes were
like black enamel, but now in the bare light of the morning they are of
a more crystalline gray than the sea.

A tragic duel of looks ... a thousand questions asked and answered ...
wonderful understanding ... dizziness ... unbearable dizziness.

He stands balancing himself on his feet searching the ground for the
nascent lie. Then he puts a direct, confident question--is this
ma