"For there is a commencement and an end, and, thank God, the soothing void is made for all. "We have confidence in the transcendental goodness of the Creator: he will not prolong, beyond the human term, our pains or joys. "And not even a shrugging of shoulders, for we are too witty to rage against the eternal laws; besides, we have the sentiment of decorum." He was tired, as tired as Sixtine, of this dim passion. The night of their hearts truly needed some flashes of lightning. For a week she had retired within herself, but like a flower which, at the approach of a storm, draws together its trembling petals above the sacred pistils; the danger over, they return to their former state and joyously receive the fugitive caress of the passing pollen. "Another less metaphorical reflection: the Russian has certainly made positive advances and in his plaints the magic word of marriage must, like an echo, have returned and reverberated. Magic he considers it. I do not know. She must wish to preserve a certain liberty of behavior and the personal home of a woman unaccustomed to share the ambient air with another. Moreover, I have never surprised, in the implications of her phrases, the least allusion to a matrimonial desire. I do not believe that she would wish to close with such a banal epilogue the indefinite avenue of our common dreams. We cannot erect this barrier in the midst of our life, dividing in two adverbs--before, after--the perspective of our desires, that sphinx rising towards the horizontal profundities of the sky! "Ah! I regret that this is not the stone on which her foot has stumbled, for I should understand at least. "After all, she was only to answer me. I think that I have been sufficiently precise and if acts rather than words were needed, have I not given myself up to acts? "A quite unfortunate tentative!... "Ah! I am weary, as weary as she is weary. "If you do not wish to drink the dew I offer to your lips in the hollow of my hand, some beast, bolder or wiser, will pass, that will refresh itself with this drink of love. "Come while it is morning and while animal life sleeps in the woods! "Come to roam among the wet herbs: I will shake off the rain of pearls and the snow flakes of diamonds from your blond hair! "Come and you will exult with joy, come, the train of your robe, among the mosses, will make a wake of light, and the rising sun will kiss, in its candor, the smile of your purple lips! "Come, you will be as a white-browed queen among green branches, and the tame butterflies will rest on your ears. "You will subdue nature and at the call of your mouth, my soul, wild as a fawn, will bound towards you."