He proposed to go away and come again another day: but she insisted on his staying:
“Just a moment. … I shall be all right presently. … It’s silly of me, isn’t it?”
He felt that she was not her usual self: but he did not question her: and, to turn the conversation, he said:
“That’s what comes of having been so brilliant last night. You took too much out of yourself.”
She smiled a little ironically.
“One can’t say the same of you,” she replied.
He laughed.
“I don’t believe you said a word,” she went on.
“Not a word.”
“But there were interesting people there.”
“Oh yes. All sorts of lights and famous people, all talking at once. But I’m lost among all your boneless Frenchmen who understand everything, and explain everything, and excuse everything—and feel nothing at all. People who talk for hours together about art and love! Isn’t it revolting?”
“But you ought to be interested in art if not in love.”
“One doesn’t talk about these things: one does them.”
“But when one cannot do them?” said Colette, pouting.
Christophe replied with a laugh:
“Well, leave it to others. Everybody is not fit for art.”
“Nor for love?”
“Nor for love.”
“How awful! What is left for us?”
“Housekeeping.”
“Thanks,” said Colette, rather annoyed. She turned to the piano and began again, made mistakes, thumped the keyboard, and moaned:
“I can’t! … I’m no good at all. I believe you are right. Women aren’t any good.”
“It’s something to be able to say so,” said Christophe genially.
She looked at him rather sheepishly, like a little girl who has been scolded, and said:
“Don’t be so hard.”
“I’m not saying anything hard about good women,” replied Christophe gaily. “A good woman is Paradise on earth. Only, Paradise on earth. …”
“I know. No one has ever seen it.”
“I’m not so pessimistic. I say only that I have never seen it: but that’s no reason why it should not exist. I’m determined to find it, if it does exist. But it is not easy. A good woman and a man of genius are equally rare.”
“And all the other men and women don’t count?”
“On the contrary, it is only they who count—for the world.”
“But for you?”
“For me, they don’t exist.”
“You are hard,” repeated Colette.
“A little. Somebody has to be hard, if only in the interest of the others! … If there weren’t a few pebbles here and there in the world, the whole thing would go to pulp.”
“Yes. You are right. It is a good thing for you that you are strong,” said Colette sadly. “But you must not be too hard on men—and especially on women who aren’t strong. … You don’t know how terrible our weakness is to us. Because you see us flirting, and laughing, and doing silly things, you think we never dream of anything else, and you despise us. Ah! if you could see all that goes on in the minds of the girls of from fifteen to eighteen as they go out into society, and have the sort of success that comes to their youth and freshness—when they have danced, and talked smart nonsense, and said bitter things at which people laugh because they laugh, when they have given themselves to imbeciles, and sought in vain in their eyes the light that is nowhere to be found—if you could see them in their rooms at night, in silence, alone, kneeling in agony to pray! …”
“Is it possible?” said Christophe, altogether amazed. “What! you, too, have suffered?”
Colette did not reply: but tears came to her eyes. She tried to smile and held out her hand to Christophe: he grasped it warmly.
“What would you have us do? There is nothing to do. You men can free yourselves and do what you like. But we are bound forever and ever within the narrow circle of the duties and pleasures of society: we cannot break free.”
“There is nothing to prevent your freeing yourselves, finding some work you like, and winning your independence just as we do.”
“As you do? Poor Monsieur Krafft! Your work is not so very certain! … But at least you like your work. But what sort of work can we do? There isn’t any that we could find interesting—for, I know, we dabble in all sorts of things, and pretend to be interested in a heap of things that do not concern us: we do so want to be interested in something! I do what the others do. I do charitable work and sit on social work committees. I go to lectures at the Sorbonne by Bergson and Jules Lemaître, historical concerts, classical matinées, and I take notes and notes. … I never know what I am writing! … and I try to persuade myself that I am absorbed by it, or at least that it is useful. Ah! but I know that it is not true. I know that I don’t care a bit, and that I am bored by it all! … Don’t despise me because I tell you frankly what everybody thinks in secret. I’m no sillier than the rest. But what use are philosophy, history, and science to me? As for art—you see—I strum and daub and make messy little watercolor sketches;—but is that enough to fill a woman’s life? There is only one end to our life: marriage. But do you think there is much fun in marrying this or that young man whom I know as well as you do? I see them as they are. I am not fortunate enough to be like your German Gretchens, who can always create an illusion for themselves. … That is terrible, isn’t it? To look around and see girls who have married and their husbands, and to think that one will have to do as they have done, be cramped in body and mind, and become dull like them! … One needs to be stoical, I tell you, to accept such a life with such obligations. All women are not capable of it. … And
