LITMIR.BIZ

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you know that you are very pretty … and that you look sweet and kind?… Make haste and tell me all about yourself...."

      But she does not answer. She stares at me with wide-open eyes; and my impulsive phrases strike with such force against her stupefaction that each one of them seems by degrees to fall back upon myself. I in my turn am left utterly dumfounded; she is so ill at ease that I myself become nervous; her astonishment embarrasses me; I secretly laugh at my own discomfiture; and I end by asking, feebly:

      "What's your name?"

      "Rose."

      "Rose … Roseline.... My name is...."

      And I burst out laughing. We were really talking like two children trying to make friends. I threw my arm round her waist and put my lips to her cheek. I loved its milky perfume. My kiss left a little white mark which the blood soon flushed again.

      She told me that she had seen me from a distance and that she had come running up without stopping. I was careful not to ask her what she wanted to tell me, for I knew that she had obeyed my wishes rather than her own; and I led her towards the house:

      "Rose, my dear Rose.... I know that you are unhappy."

      She stops, gives me a quick look and then turns red and lowers her eyes. Thereupon, so as not to startle her, I ask her about her work and about the farm.

      Rose answers shily, in short sentences, and we walk about in the garden. From time to time, she stops to pull up a weed; methodically, she breaks off the flowers hanging faded from their stalks; occasionally, she makes a reference, full of sound sense, to the care required by plants and vegetables. But my will passes like an obliterating line over all that we say, over all that we do; and, while Rose anxiously tries to fill the silence, I lie in wait, ready for a word, a sigh, a look that will enable me to go straight to the heart of that soul, which I am eager to grasp even as we take in our hand a mysterious object of which we are trying to discover the secret.

      Alas, the darkness between us is too dense and there is only the light of her beautiful eyes, those sad, submissive eyes, to guide my pity! Our conversation is somewhat laboured; the girl evades any direct question; and any opinion which I venture to form can be only of the vaguest.

      She seems to me to be lacking in spirit, of a nervous and despondent temperament, but not unintelligent. I know nothing of her mental powers. We sometimes see an active intelligence directing very inferior abilities, just as our good friend the dog is an excellent shepherd to his silly, docile flock. In her, the most ordinary ideas are so logically dovetailed that one is tempted to accept them even when one hesitates to approve them. Her mind must be free from baseness, for throughout our conversation she made no effort to please me. Would it not have needed a very quick discernment, a very uncommon shrewdness to know so soon that she would please me better like that?

      That was what I said to myself by way of encouragement, so great was my haste to pour into her ears those instinctive words of hope and independence which it was natural to utter. And, let them be premature or tardy, barren or fruitful, I could not refrain from speaking them....

      But suddenly she released herself: it was already past the time for milking the cows; they must be waiting for her. Nevertheless, she gave a shrug of the shoulders which implied that she cared little whether she was late or not; and, with a "Good-bye till to-morrow!" she went off heavily, making the ground ring with the steady tramp of her wooden shoes.

      For an instant I stood motionless in the orchard. Her shrill voice still sounded in my ears; and the constraint of her attitude oppressed me. The road by which she had just gone was now hardly visible. A fog rose from the sea and gradually blotted out everything. The plains, the hills, the cottages vanished one by one; and already, around me, veils of mist clung to the branches of the apple-trees. At regular intervals, the boom of the fog-horn startled the silence.

      2

      Those who pass through our life and who will simply play a part there take shape in successive images. The first, a fair but illusive picture, fades away as another sadly obtrudes itself; and another, paler yet, comes in its turn; and thus they all vanish, becoming less and less distinct until the end, until the day when a last, vague outline is fixed in our memory.

      How different is the process in the case of those who are to remain in our existence and blend with it for all time! It is then as though the living reality at the very outset shattered the image formed by our admiration and triumphantly took its place. In point of fact, it vivifies it and, later, heightens it, colours it, ever enriching it with all the benefits which the daily round brings to healthy minds. Those beings will always remain with us, whatever happens; they will be more present in their absence than things which are actually present; and the taste, the colour, the very life itself of our life will never reach us except through them.

      I thought of all this vaguely. There were two women before me: one, coarse and awkward, was obliterating the other, so beautiful amid the ripe corn. Alas, should I ever see that other again? Was she not one of those images which fade out of our remembrance, becoming ever paler and more shadowy?

      I felt a little discouraged. But perhaps the sadness of the hour was influencing me? My feminine nerves must be affected by this damp, warm mist. I went back to the house, doing my utmost simply to think that I was about to undertake a "rather difficult" task.

      Under the lamp, which the outside pall had caused to be lit earlier than usual, and in the brightness of the red-and-white dining-room, decked with gorgeous flowers, I discovered another side to my interview. While I was describing it laughingly, my disappointment had seemed natural; and, my eagerness being now reinforced by pity, a new fervour inspired my curiosity.

      In sensitive and therefore anxious natures, the very excess of the sensation makes the impression received subject to violent reaction. It goes up and down, down and up; and not until it slackens a little can reason intervene and bring it to its normal level.

      Chapter V

      1

      I have before me one of those little exercise-books whose covers are gay with pictures of soldiers or rural scenes. It is Rose's diary. I received it this morning, I have read it and it has left me both pleased and touched.

      It is a very simple and rather commonplace narrative, but one which, in my eyes, has the outstanding merit of sincerity. To me it represents the story of a real living creature, of a woman whom I saw yesterday, whom I shall see to-morrow and whose suffering is but a step removed from my happiness. The smallest details of that story have a familiar voice and aspect....

      Poor girl! Would not one think that an evil genius had taken pleasure in playing with her destiny, like a child playing at ball? She was born of poor parents. Her father, a carpenter, was a drunkard and frequently out of work. He would often come home at night intoxicated, when he would beat his wife and threaten to kill her. Coarse scenes, visions of murder, screams, oaths and suppressed weeping were the first images and the first sounds that stamped themselves on Rose's memory. One's heart bleeds to think of those child-souls which open in the same hour to the light of day and to horror, gaining their knowledge of life whilst trembling lest they should lose it. We see them caught in a hurricane of madness, like little leaves whirling in the storm; and to the end of their days they will shudder at the thought of it.

      She was left an orphan at the age of six. A neighbour offered to take her, a wealthy and devout old man, who sent her to the Nuns of the Visitation at the neighbouring town.

      Of those quiet, uneventful years in the convent there is nothing in particular to record. The child is perfectly happy, nor could she be otherwise, for she is naturally reasonable and she is in no danger of forgetting how kind fate has been to her. She pictures what she might have been, she sees what she is; and her soul is full of gladness.

      In January 18—, Rose is seventeen. She is to pass her examinations the following summer. Her diary here gives evidence of a steadfast and wholehearted optimism; she views the future with joyous eyes, or rather she does not see it at all, which is the surest way of smiling at it cheerfully. Her eyes are still the eyes of a child, to whom the convent-garden is a world and the present hour an eternity.

      Unfortunately, she had

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