Why burden him with it?
He doesn’t deserve it . . .
“Poor darling . . . don’t be nasty, don’t be sad!
Yes, I love you, I love you, oh I do . . . But I don’t want to tell you.
I’m so proud, deep down, if you only knew!”
Leaning against my bosom, he shuts his eyes, he accepts my lie with loving trust, and still listens to me saying
“I love you” after I’ve stopped speaking . . .
What a strange load on my arms, which were empty for such a long time!
I don’t know how to rock a child this big, and how heavy his head is . . .
But let him rest there, sure of me!
Sure of me . . . because a well-known aberration makes him jealous of my present and of my vagabond future, while he reposes trustingly on this heart which another man inhabited for such a long time!
This honorable, careless lover doesn’t imagine that he’s sharing me with a memory, and that he’ll never savor that greatest of glories: to be able to tell me,
“I’m bringing you a joy and a pain completely unknown to you . . .”
Here he is, on my bosom . . . Why he, and not some other man?
I don’t know.
I lean over his forehead, I’d like to protect him from myself, apologize for giving him only an unoccupied heart, not a purified one.
I’d like to defend him against the grief I may cause him . . . Come now!
Margot had predicted it. I’m returning to the fire . . . but this fire is perfectly safe and has nothing infernal about it: it’s more like the low flame under a kettle on the stove . . .
“Wake up, darling!”
“I’m not sleeping,” he murmurs, without raising his lovely eyelashes . . . “I’m breathing you in . . .”
“Will you wait for me in Paris while I’m on tour, or will you go to your mother’s in the Ardennes?”
He gets up without replying, and smoothes his hair with the palm of his hand.
“Tell me.”
He takes his hat from the table and walks away with lowered eyes, still silent . . .
With a bound I reach him and cling to his shoulders:
“Don’t leave!
Don’t leave!
I’ll do what you want!
Come back!
Don’t leave me alone!
Oh, don’t leave me alone!”
What’s come over me?
I’m now just a poor rag soaked in tears . . . I saw, departing with him, my warmth, my light, and that second love mingled with the burning embers of the first, yet so dear to me and so unhoped-for! . . . I remain hanging to my friend with hands like those of a shipwrecked woman, and I repeatedly stammer, without hearing it:
“Every one is leaving me! . . .
I’m all alone! . . .”
Since he loves me, he knows there’s no need for speeches or rational arguments to calm me down.
Cradling arms, a warm murmur of vague, caressing words, kisses and more kisses . . .
“Don’t look at me, darling!
I’m ugly, my mascara is running, and my nose is all red . . . I’m ashamed for having been so stupid!”
“My Renee!
My little one! What a brute I’ve been! . . .
Yes, yes, I’m nothing but a big brute!
You want me to wait in Paris? I will. You want me to go to Mother’s? I will!”
Undecided, embarrassed by my victory, I no longer know what I want:
“Listen, Max darling, here’s what we must do: I’ll leave alone, with as much enthusiasm as a whipped dog . . . We’ll write each other every day . . .
We’ll be heroic, won’t we, till we reach the day, the lovely fifteenth of May, that will reunite us? ”
Gloomily my hero consents with a resigned nod.
“May fifteenth, Max! . . .
I think,” I say more quietly, “that on that day I’ll fling myself at you as if hurling myself into the sea, just as irrevocably, just as willingly . . .”
The embrace and look I receive in reply make me lose my head somewhat: