It was already late. I was not going to do anything. I remained
seated there, at the end of the day, opposite the looking-glass. In
the setting of the room that the twilight began to invade, I saw the
outline of my forehead, the oval of my face, and, under my blinking
eyelids, the gaze by which I enter into myself as into a tomb.

My tiredness, the gloominess (I heard rain outside), the darkness that
intensified my solitude and made me look larger, and then something
else, I knew not what, made me sad. It bored me to be sad. I shook
myself. What was the matter? Nothing. Only myself.

I have not always been alone in life as I was that evening. Love for
me had taken on the form and the being of my little Josette. We had
met long before, in the rear of the millinery shop in which she worked
at Tours. She had smiled at me with singular persistence, and I caught
her head in my hands, kissed her on the lips--and found out suddenly
that I loved her.

I no longer recall the strange bliss we felt when, we first embraced.
It is true, there are moments when I still desire her as madly as the
first time. This is so especially when she is away. When she is with
me, there are moments when she repels me.

We discovered each other in the holidays. The days when we shall see
each other again before we die--we could count them--if we dared.

To die! The idea of death is decidedly the most important of all
ideas. I should die some day. Had I ever thought of it? I reflected.
No, I had never thought of it. I could not. You can no more look