have them now? Come, I oughtn't to be sitting like this and thinking like this! . . . I make up a host of pretty stories, sentimental little stories, and see myself, see us both, years ago, as quite young children, both of us. He played and I played . . . almost the same game: he a boy, I a girl. It was as though he were seeking me. It was as though I, in my childish dreams, divined something of him, far, far away, as though there were a part of me that wanted to go to him, a part of him that wanted to come to me . . . Stop, I am giving way again to those secret enthusiasms which lie deep down in my soul like strange, hidden streams, those vague, romantic ferments such as I imagined that young girls might have, but not I, a woman of my years, a woman with my past, the mother of a big son . . . I will not do it any more, I will not . . . It is morbid to be like this . . . And yet . . . and yet . . . when the wind blows and the rain comes down, it is, it still is the dear secret that brings the tears to my eyes . . . If I love him, quite silently, deep down within myself, why may I not just dream like that? The absurdity of it exists only for me: nobody, nobody knows of it. I have some one else hidden within me: a younger woman, a sister, a young sister-soul, a girl's soul almost. It is absurd, I know; but sometimes, sometimes it is so strong in me and I love him so well and feel, just like a girl, that he is the first man I have ever loved . . . Oh, Henri! I can
