him like a flower snapped from its stem.

A sudden instinct sent me to the looking-glass, as if it held an answer
to everything. Maybe looking-glasses do offer the eternal answer to the
riddle of the universe.

I had said to myself: "You will be close to him, you two will be alone
together, perhaps it will be beyond human power to try to be happy." I
used to fancy life as a struggle, a piece of work to be done, a
masterpiece, and imagined what my acts would be--all voluntary and
making for perfection. I forgot that they would have to be performed by
these arms with their warm flesh.

I had thought: "He knows me through and through, I have made him read
everything." But no, he knows nothing. He does not know the lovely shape
of my breasts, the lyre of my hips, the curves of my legs, nor this
unknown body the expression of which is so changing that it is like some
murmured tale which the light embraces and tells aloud.

It remains for me to bestow a final confidence upon him; that of the
body unveiling itself, _daring_ to confess itself. Is this not the
purest confidence? But let it not come before its own hour, for it must
lead to a moment of truth so naked and so unexpected that it frightens
me a little.

It is strange: this evening I live with the whole of my body for the
first time. I exist wherever it is. Even as I stand here fixed and tense
in front of the glass, I follow a line which may arch, swell and melt
away and which already bears the shape of love.

I can imagine everything ... for there's no need of having loved in
order to be a lover. All I should have to do, if I dared, would be to
twine my arms around his neck, press him hard, and harder still, and the
moment would come when I should forget the modesty of my single life.

And without knowing any more one would be lost, distraught, acquiescent,
lulled to sleep even to the soul, more beautiful than one is beautiful.

I can go still further, for the flesh that clasps cannot be deceived.
When the man and the woman are united, it is the woman subdued, armed
with her weakness, who becomes the stronger. I am sure of it already. In
the depths of my ignorant flesh, I already feel domination germinating.
It is not I; it is a law older than I that is seeking to fulfill itself.

And suddenly I am frightened....

But I am mad.... Man, woman, nothing but two words, which are not of the
stuff of life. Is there a single emotion in which I recognize myself?
Tr