I can see that she has half-risen, in the little bedroom which has lost its color.  She is afraid of the truth!  She watches my words as you look at a blasphemer.  But the truth has seized me and cannot let me go.  And I recall what was—­both this woman and that, and all those whom I loved and never deigned to know what they brought me when they brought their bodies; I recall the fierce selfishness which nothing exhausted, and all the savagery of my life beside her.  I say it all—­unable even to avoid the blows of brutal details—­like a harsh duty accomplished to the end.

Sometimes she murmured, like a sigh, “I knew it.”  At others, she would say, almost like a sob, “That’s true!” And once, too, she began a confused protest, a sort of reproach.  Then, soon, she listens nigher.  She might almost be left behind by the greatness of my confession; and, gradually, I see her falling into silence, the twice-illumined woman on that adorable side of the room, she still receives on her hair and neck and hands, some morsels of heaven.

And what I am most ashamed of in those bygone days when I was mad after the treasure of unknown women is this:  that I spoke to them of eternal fidelity, of superhuman enticements, of divine exaltation, of sacred affinities which must be joined together at all costs, of beings who have always been waiting for each other, and are made for each other, and all that one can say—­sometimes almost sincerely, alas!—­just to gain my ends.  I confess all that, I cast it from me as if I was at last ridding myself of the lies acted upon her, and upon the others, and upon myself.  Instinct is instinct; let it rule like a force of nature.  But the Lie is a ravisher.

I feel a sort of curse rising from me upon that blind religion with which we clothe the things of the flesh because they are strong, those of which I was the plaything, like everybody, always and everywhere.  No, two sensuous lovers are not two friends.  Much rather are they two enemies, closely attached to each other.  I know it, I know it!  There are perfect couples, no doubt—­perfection always exists somewhere—­but I mean us others, all of us, the ordinary people!  I know!—­the human being’s real quality, the delicate lights and shadows of human dreams, the sweet and complicated mystery of personalities, sensuous lovers deride them, both of them!  They are two egoists, falling fiercely on each other.  Together they sacrifice themselves, utterly in a flash of pleasure.  There are moments when one would lay hold forcibly on joy, if only a crime stood in the way.  I know it; I know it through all those for whom I have successively hungered, and whom I have scorned with shut eyes—­even those who were not better than I.

And this hunger for novelty—­which makes sensuous love equally changeful and rapacious, which makes us seek the same emotion in other bodies which we cast off as fast as they fall—­turns life into an infernal succession of disenchantments, spites and scorn; and it is chiefly that hunger for novelty which leaves us a prey to unrealizable hope and irrevocable regret.  Those lovers who persist in remaining together execute themselves; the name of their common death, which at first was Absence, becomes Presence.  The real outcast is not he who returns all alone, like Olympio; they who remain together are more apart.