f their own
accord. Your life can be gentle and passive and still be useful and
good. It is my own fault if I am disappointed: I am always more or less
of a child; and I become passionately enthusiastic on the strength of a
smile, or a pure outline, or a beautiful profile. I ought not to have
looked in you for what existed only in my imagination...."

"Then you are no longer angry with me?"

"Why should I be?"

I kissed her tenderly. Poor child, so she had suffered through love! I
pitied her; and yet the happiness of knowing her a little better
swallowed up my pity. Things move quickly in those who, not believing in
heaven, seek upon earth the beginning and the end of life and all that
comes between. And they come to prefer to the highest joys those which
foster a clearer vision and a truer comprehension.

And, trying to explain myself, I added:

"One would think that a time comes when we judge like a traveller
looking out from the top of a tower. All the differences melt into unity
before his eyes. He turns slowly and sees, on the one side, the forest;
on the other, the sea; at his feet, the noisy town, the world; a little
farther, the calm and peace of the fields; and, overhead, the infinite
indifference of the skies. And, like him, we are engrossed in what we
discover and we no longer see the tower by which we climbed nor feel
that on which our feet stand; and we are nothing, nothing but a thinking
light that settles upon some life."

4

We lay stretched in the clover that was still warm from the heat of the
day; and our arms were locked and our hair intertwined. My cheek cooled
hers, which her tears had set on fire; and the sombre peace of the sky
sank into us. We were both filled with the peculiar happiness that comes
after a painful confession, a happiness whose source is a sense of
security, a joy that seems yearning to cover us with its wings for one
halcyon hour.

"Rose, darling, never forget the feeling of relief which you have now.
That sense of security is infinitely precious. Let its fragrance remain
with you for ever. May it become impossible for you to do without it.
Seek it, insist upon it silently, even from the strangers whom you may
meet. Falsehood destroys the perfume and the bloom of women: it makes
them colourless and uniformly commonplace. Always have the courage to be
true. A sort of secret combat is waged between any two persons who meet
for the first time. Remember that, as a woman,