el within me, and I see that they are right even if my
own are not like them (for each one's freedom is part of his value),
and I have a feeling that I am telling you a lie whenever I do not
speak to you.

I am only going on with my thought when I say aloud:

"I would give my life for you, and I forgive you beforehand for
everything you might ever do to make yourself happy."

She presses me softly in her arms, and I feel her murmuring tears and
crooning words; they are like my own.

It seems to me that truth has taken its place again in our little room,
and become incarnate; that the greatest bond which can bind two beings
together is being confessed, the great bond we did not know of, though
it is the whole of salvation:

"Before, I loved you for my own sake; to-day, I love you for yours."

When you look straight on, you end by seeing the immense event--death.
There is only one thing which really gives the meaning of our whole
life, and that is our death. In that terrible light may they judge
their hearts who will one day die. Well I know that Marie's death
would be the same thing in my heart as my own, and it seems to me also
that only within her of all the world does my own likeness wholly live.
_We_ are not afraid of the too great sincerity which goes the length of
these things; and we talk about them, beside the bed which awaits the
inevitable hour when we shall not awake in it again. We say:--

"There'll be a day when I shall begin something that I shan't finish--a
walk, or a letter, or a sentence, or a dream."

I stoop over her blue eyes. Just then I recalled the black, open
window in front of me--far away--that night when I nearly died. I look
at length into those clear eyes, and see that I am sinking into the
only grave I shall have had. It is neither an illusion nor an act of
charity to admire the almost incredible beauty of those eyes.

What is there within us to-night? What is this sound of wings? Are
our eyes opening as fast as night falls? Formerly, we had the sensual
lovers' animal dread of nothingness; but to-day, the simplest and
richest proof of our love is that the supreme meaning of death to us
is--leaving each other.

And the bond of the flesh--neither are we afraid to think and speak of
that, saying that we were so joined together that we knew each other
completely, that our bodies have searched each other. This memory,
this brand in the flesh, has its profound value; and the p