wers, take everything for granted--what happened
during the day, all the details, everything, and more than everything.

As a matter of fact, what we listen to is our footsteps. We keep even
pace, our tread makes the same sound. A discovery flooding the heart--it
is a single step that is carrying us along.

We walk side by side, and the space between us does not divide us. We
are followed and preceded by a whole procession of couples moving with a
slowness strangely rhythmic which leaves a wake behind.

* * * * *

We have told everything, everything we know, and everything we are. It
is not a question of being alike in order to be comrades, of springing
from the same roots or having drunk from the same source. The thing is,
for each to serve the truth which the other lives with the same heart as
his own, different truth.

No, it is not a question of being alike. Haven't I observed a hundred
times that we are very different? How can one wish it otherwise? How
conceive that we whose age is not the same, whose bodies are so
different, whose characters are well-defined, and whose careers are
opposite should respond to the same influences? Why, each of us responds
to the veriest trifles according to his own temperament.... Does he
perceive as I do this street, the flower-beds of the big cafes, the
crowd with glowing eyes, the gritty dust? Is this instant the same
instant to him? I know it is not....

A block. How shall we get through? The crossing of the huge
thoroughfares, with its din, its black swarming thousands, dashing
motors, clanging of bells, tooting of horns, discharges its mechanical
eruption upon the city. Let us run. He has slipped his strong arm under
mine; we take long joyous strides and finally land in peaceful territory
out of breath and radiant.

Here at last is a boulevard where one can breathe, then an old
countrified street where silence has nested. We plunge into its
tranquillity.

But ... I hadn't noticed--the red rises to my cheeks--his arm is still
under my arm, confident, natural. How is it that it never occurred to me
that it should always be so?

Shall I dare to tell him how sweet it is to feel him so close to me, our
two lives joined, our two souls welded--how _necessary_ it is to me?

* * * * *

Feelings depart quickly, and joy too. I can scarcely follow my feelings
and my joy. When my heart has slowed down, yes, _I_ will