not bear me a grudge?

"And can the most beautiful union _remain_ beautiful? For we are about
to sign a pact. There's no denying it. What's to be done about this
transport that we are, this constant expectation, this clinging
intoxication?

"You know we shall have only each other intimately. Even inanimate
things will exert a tendency to influence us. When the little lodging
will take on our mould and there will be chairs to hold out our habits
to us and a brown pulsating clock, creature of even utterance and
over-sensitive soul, the fond familiar place will weigh and impose
itself upon us.

"So the host of wishes, the magnificent secrets, the kernel of sadness,
the nomadic hopes must all be made to enter by this door into our
associated days? Tell me, how is one to act? Must happiness, _true_
happiness without law or bridle, also be shut up here, here and nowhere
else? And must happiness be the same for the two of us who are
different?

"There's a children's fairy tale that once there was a princess whose
heavily embroidered robe was by a magic command made to pass through a
ring.

"Lovers betrothed think they understand love. But they have not lived
together--and _every day_. They don't know what that means. Those who
love as in books do not contemplate a long journey when they set out
together, and if the short-lived blaze vanishes at the first turning in
the road, it is not a great misfortune. Another spark will do for
another kindling. And there are those who _renounce_, abdicate their own
selves, bend the knee, and trust to love.... But how are those to act
who are not cut in heroic marble, who do not want to lie or renounce,
who don't pity the _other_ one, who are not afraid of themselves, who
love as people love in actual life, who are like us? Perhaps you know
better than I do. You are a man and older than I am, but I--I ask
myself....

"I was ready, as women are, for great impossible things. I never thought
about them very clearly, but I felt my emotions pierce me like dagger
thrusts. They inspired me with an all-powerful spirit, and if I had had
to batter down mountains, or dash through a river of fire, or die in
your stead, I should have closed my eyes and done it at one go.

"And behold the test. The test is here. Why is it that the thing one
awaits and expects never is the actual test? The actual test has only a
sorry way about it, a commonplace aspect, a very reduced compass; it
holds nothing b