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'Too old!' Paula said to me, sounding annoyed. 'What an idea! I've never felt younger.'

'One feels the way one feels,' I said.

That little spark of youth which had dazzled me for a moment fizzled out all too quickly. Glass mirrors are too indulgent; the faces of these women of my own age, tha…

When I found myself back in Paris, in my house, with things to do, I thought, 'I've got to pull myself together.' Pull oneself together the way one salvages a sauce that has turned - it can be done, it's feasible. You step back and, with the knowing eye of a connoisseur, you look at your worries, y…

There were other letters, in Palermo, in Syracuse. Lewis sent me one each week, as before; and, as before, they all ended with that word 'Love,' which means everything and signifies nothing. Was it still a word of endearment, or the most banal, of formulas? Lewis's tenderness had always been so dis…

I left the post office, stood on the pavement, my arms hung limp at my sides. What dreadful legerdemain! I was no longer sure of the ground under my feet, nor of the calendar, nor even of my own name. Lewis had written and letters were arriving; therefore, his letter had to be here. It was not here…

Yes, my life with Lewis would have been quite cramped. A foreigner, an outsider, I would have been able neither to make a life for myself nor to blend into the life of that huge country which would never be mine. I would have been only a woman in love clinging to the man she loved. I didn't feel my…