ttraction, because of your
poetry. But in reality I came to you--I see myself now--with clenched
fists and closed eyes."

She added:

"We deceive ourselves a good deal about love. It is almost never what
they say it is.

"There may be sublime affinities, magnificent attractions. I do not
say such a love may not exist between two human beings. But we are not
these two. We have never thought of anything but ourselves. I know,
of course, that I am in love with you. So are you with me. There is
an attraction for you which does not exist for me, since I do not feel
any pleasure. You see, we are making a bargain. You give me a dream,
I give you joy. But all this is not love."

He shrugged his shoulders, half in doubt, half in protest. He did not
want to say anything. All the same, he murmured feebly:

"Even in the purest of loves we cannot escape from ourselves."

"Oh," she said with a gesture of pious protest, the vehemence of which
surprised me, "that is not the same thing. Don't say that, don't say
that!"

It seemed to me there was a vague regret in her voice and the dream of
a new dream in her eyes.

She dispelled it with a shake of her head.

"How happy I was! I felt rejuvenated, like a new being. I had a sense
of modesty again. I remember that I did not dare to show the tip of my
foot from under my dress. I even had a feeling about my face, my
hands, my very name."

. . . . .

Then the man continued the confession from the point where she had left
off, and spoke of their first meetings. He wished to caress her with
words, to win her over gradually with phrases and with the charm of
memories.

"The first time we were alone--"

She looked at him.

"It was in the street, one evening," he said. "I took your arm. You
leaned more and more upon my shoulder. People swarmed around us, but
we seemed to be quite alone. Everything around us changed into
absolute solitude. It seemed to me that we were both walking on the
waves of the sea."

"Ah!" she said. "How good you were! That first evening your face was
like what it never was afterwards, even in our happiest moments."

"We spoke of one thing and another, and while I held you close to me,
clasped like a bunch of flowers, you told me about people we knew, you
spoke of the sunlight that day and the coolness of the evening. But
really you were telling me that you were mine. I felt your confession
running through everything you said