Macumer has just wakened me,darling,with your husband's letter.
First and foremost--Yes.We shall be going to Chantepleurs about the end of April.To me it will be a piling up of pleasure to travel,to see you,and to be the godmother of your first child.I must,please,have Macumer for godfather.To take part in a ceremony of the Church with another as my partner would be hateful to me.Ah!if you could see the look he gave me as I said this,you would know what store this sweetest of lovers sets on his wife!
"I am the more bent on our visiting La Crampade together,Felipe,"Iwent on,"because I might have a child there.I too,you know,would be a mother!...And yet,can you fancy me torn in two between you and the infant?To begin with,if I saw any creature--were it even my own son--taking my place in your heart,I couldn't answer for the consequences.Medea may have been right after all.The Greeks had some good notions!"And he laughed.
So,my sweetheart,you have the fruit without the flowers;I the flowers without the fruit.The contrast in our lives still holds good.
Between the two of us we have surely enough philosophy to find the moral of it some day.Bah!only ten months married!Too soon,you will admit,to give up hope.
We are leading a gay,yet far from empty life,as is the way with happy people.The days are never long enough for us.Society,seeing me in the trappings of a married woman,pronounces the Baronne de Macumer much prettier than Louise de Chaulieu:a happy love is a most becoming cosmetic.When Felipe and I drive along the Champs-Elysees in the bright sunshine of a crisp January day,beneath the trees,frosted with clusters of white stars,and face all Paris on the spot where last year we met with a gulf between us,the contrast calls up a thousand fancies.Suppose,after all,your last letter should be right in its forecast,and we are too presumptuous!