She who had known so many men of captivating beauty and impressive intelligence loved him; and he felt as if he had been placed on a very tall pedestal in the midst of his life.
Our loves are creations, our creations, we give our soul, our blood, our life to love, giving away the very best of ourselves.
Sex is the moment when the spirit rests and the beast inside us demands satisfaction.
She seemed to listen to him avidly, to thrill to each new confidence he made about his feelings, ideas and habits, always drawing him out. She wanted to know what time he got up, what books he read,which were his favourite songs, as if pushing open the closed doors of his soul, just a crack, but wanting to be shown the whole house; and her eyes never stopped scrutinizing and studying him.
He went to bed feeling that life was good; he at last knew, recognized, how to feel that ideal, noble, picturesque passion he pulled inside him from books and poems that had so enchanted him. And fortune had favoured him by giving that passion a pleasing wrapping, which seduced both his mind and his imagination.
She had had lovers but that simply made him appreciate her love all the more. To be able to interest a woman who knows men so profoundly, a woman whom repeated disappointments have made skeptical, who has grown weary of sensation. One would possess not merely a beautiful body, but a whole complex being. Each of her lovers, each of her relationships, had shaped her, leaving in her spirit or her sense of remorse, some part of their personality; holding her in one's arms, possessing her, would be like possessing the refinement of all the elegant people she had known, the wit of dramatists, the polished manners of diplomats, and all the civilizations of which they are a flower, the essence, the delicious, artificial epitome.
Now, her love had idealized him, ennobled him, lined his soul with sweetness and clothed it with glory outside. And he stretched out proudly on the bed, listening to the wind moaning and brushing against the walls of the house. He knew she would be listening to the wind in the same way as he was and that fact filled his soul with a fierce langour.
To her, this wind that seems to master is but a slave to his tenderness....just as she is.
