, I am consumed with longing for it. The past! I shall cry, I shall
suffer because the past will never come back again.

"But love the past as much as you will, it will never come back. Death
is everywhere, in the ugliness of what has been too long beautiful, in
the tarnishing of what has been clean and pure, in the forgetfulness of
what is long past, in daily habits, which are the forgetfulness of what
is near. We catch only glimpses of life. Death is the one thing we
really have time to see. Death is the only palpable thing. Of what
use is it to be beautiful and chaste? They will walk over our graves
just the same.

"A day is coming when I shall be no more. I am crying because I shall
surely die. There is an invincible nothingness in everything and
everybody. So when one thinks of that, dear, one smiles and forgives.
One does not bear grudges. But goodness won in that way is worse than
anything else."

. . . . .

He bent over and kissed her hands. He enveloped her in a warm,
respectful silence, but, as always, I felt he was master of himself.

"I have always thought of death," she continued in a changed voice.
"One day I confessed to my husband how it haunted me. He launched out
furiously. He told me I was a neurasthenic and that he must look after
me. He made me promise to be like himself and never think of such
things, to be healthy and well-balanced, as he was.

"That was not true. It was he who suffered from the disease of
tranquillity and indifference, a paralysis, a grey malady, and his
blindness was an infirmity, and his peace was that of a dog who lives
for the sake of living, of a beast with a human face.

"What was I to do? Pray? No. That eternal dialogue in which you are
always alone is crushing. Throw yourself into some occupation? Work?
No use. Doesn't work always have to be done over again? Have children
and bring them up? That makes you feel both that you are done and
finished and that you are beginning over again to no purpose. However,
who knows?"

It was the first time that she softened.

"I have not been given the chance to practise the devotion, the
submission, the humiliation of a mother. Perhaps that would have
guided me in life. I was denied a little child."

For a moment, lowering her eyes, letting her hands fall, yielding to
the maternal impulse, she only thought of loving and regretting the
child that had not been vouchsafed to her--without perceiving t