I am only going on with my thought when I say aloud: 

“I would give my life for you, and I forgive you beforehand for everything you might ever do to make yourself happy.”

She presses me softly in her arms, and I feel her murmuring tears and crooning words; they are like my own.

It seems to me that truth has taken its place again in our little room, and become incarnate; that the greatest bond which can bind two beings together is being confessed, the great bond we did not know of, though it is the whole of salvation: 

“Before, I loved you for my own sake; to-day, I love you for yours.”

When you look straight on, you end by seeing the immense event—­death.  There is only one thing which really gives the meaning of our whole life, and that is our death.  In that terrible light may they judge their hearts who will one day die.  Well I know that Marie’s death would be the same thing in my heart as my own, and it seems to me also that only within her of all the world does my own likeness wholly live. We are not afraid of the too great sincerity which goes the length of these things; and we talk about them, beside the bed which awaits the inevitable hour when we shall not awake in it again.  We say:—­

“There’ll be a day when I shall begin something that I shan’t finish—­a walk, or a letter, or a sentence, or a dream.”

I stoop over her blue eyes.  Just then I recalled the black, open window in front of me—­far away—­that night when I nearly died.  I look at length into those clear eyes, and see that I am sinking into the only grave I shall have had.  It is neither an illusion nor an act of charity to admire the almost incredible beauty of those eyes.

What is there within us to-night?  What is this sound of wings?  Are our eyes opening as fast as night falls?  Formerly, we had the sensual lovers’ animal dread of nothingness; but to-day, the simplest and richest proof of our love is that the supreme meaning of death to us is—­leaving each other.

And the bond of the flesh—­neither are we afraid to think and speak of that, saying that we were so joined together that we knew each other completely, that our bodies have searched each other.  This memory, this brand in the flesh, has its profound value; and the preference which reciprocally graces two beings like ourselves is made of all that they have and all that they had.

I stand up in front of Marie—­already almost a convert—­and I tremble and totter, so much is my heart my master:—­

“Truth is more beautiful than dreams, you see.”

It is simply the truth which has come to our aid.  It is truth which has given us life.  Affection is the greatest of human feelings because it is made of respect, of lucidity, and light.  To understand the truth and make one’s self equal to it is everything; and to love is the same thing as to know and to understand.  Affection, which I call also compassion, because I see no difference between them, dominates everything by reason of its clear sight.  It is a sentiment as immense as if it were mad, and yet it is wise, and of human things it is the only perfect one.  There is no great sentiment which is not completely held on the arms of compassion.