"Your mother is at work?"
"Yes, in a munitions factory. She gets twelve francs a day. It"s a fortune."
"In a factory! A war factory!"
"Yes."
"Why, it"s frightful!"
"Oh, well! One takes what offers!"
"Luce! but if you, you should have such an offer?..."
"Oh, me? You see yourself, I just daub. Ah! You perceive now that I have good reason to make my smears!"
"But if it were necessary to have money and there were no other way than to work in one of those factories that produce bomb-sh.e.l.ls, would you go?"
"If it were necessary to make money and no other means?... Why, surely!
I would run for it."
"Luce! Do you realize what it is they"re doing in there?"
"No, I don"t think about it."
"Everything that will make people suffer, die, that tears them to pieces, that burns, that tortures beings like you, like me...."
She put her hand on her mouth to signal to him to hush.
"I know, I know all that, but I don"t want to think of it."
"You don"t want to think about it?"
"No," said she.
And a moment after:
"One must live.... If one thinks about it, one cannot live any more. For myself I want to live, I want to live. If they compel me to do that in order to live, shall I torment myself on this account or on that? That"s no business of mine; it isn"t I that wants it. If it is wrong it is not my fault, not my own. As for me, what I want is nothing bad."
"And what is it you do want?"
"First of all I want to live."
"You love life?"
"Why, of course. Am I wrong in that?"
"Oh, no! It is so jolly that you do live...."
"And you, you don"t love it also?"
"I did not, up to the time...."
"Up to the time?"
(This question did not call for an answer. Both of them knew it.)
Following up his thought, Pierre:
"You just said "first of all." ... "I want to live, first of all." ...
And what then? What else do you wish?"
"I don"t know."
"Yes, you do know...."
"You are very indiscreet."
"Yes, very."
"It embarra.s.ses me to tell you...."
"Tell me in my ear. No one will overhear."
She smiled:
"I would like ..." (she hesitated).
"I would like just a _little bit_ of happiness...."
(They were quite close the one to the other.)
She went on:
"Is that too much to ask?... They have often told me that I"m an egotist; and as for me, I sometimes say to myself: What has one a right to? When one sees so many wretchednesses, so much pain about one, you hardly dare to ask.... But in spite of all my heart does insist and cries out: Yes, I have the right, I have the right to a very little portion of happiness.... Tell me very frankly, is that being an egotist?
Do you think that wrong?"
He was overcome by an infinite pity. That cry of the heart, that poor little nave cry stirred him down to his soul. Tears came to his eyes.
Side by side on the bench, leaning one against the other, they felt the warmth of their legs. He would have liked to turn toward her and take her in his arms. He did not dare move for fear of not remaining in control of his emotion. Immovable, they looked straight forward at the ground before their feet. Very swiftly, in a low ardent voice, almost without moving his lips, he said:
"Oh, my darling little body! Oh, my heart! Would I could hold your little feet in my hands, upon my mouth.... I would like to eat you all...."
Without budging and very low and very quickly, just as he had spoken, she replied full of trouble: "Crazy! Foolish boy! Silence! I beg of you...."
A stroller-by of a certain age limped slowly past them. They felt their two bodies melt together with tenderness....
n.o.body left on the walk. A sparrow with ruffled feathers was dusting itself in the sand. The fountain shed its lucent droplets. Timidly their faces turned one toward the other; and scarcely had their eyes met each other, when like the rush of birds their mouths met, frightened and closely pressed--and then they flew apart. Luce sprang up, departed. He also had risen. She said to him: "Stay here."
They did not dare to look at one another any longer. He murmured: