from After Midnight

“They love each other, but they’re ill at ease in each other’s company.” Such devotion wells up in the woman’s dark glances, yet she remains obstinately silent as though fearful of bursting into tears or unburdening her heart in a flood of banal complaints. Her eyes are beautiful, eloquent, and frightened, and seem to be telling the man: “You’re a clumsy lover… you don’t begin to understand me… I don’t really know you, and you scare me… You sneer at everything I like… You lie so well! You possess me completely, yet I can’t trust you… If you knew what limpid springs you wall up within me because I fear you! What am I doing here at your side? Would that this music could free me of you forever! Or else that this violin would stop before I find out more about you! You yearn for my undoing, not my happiness, and what’s worst in me assures you of your victory.”

- from “After Midnight” by Colette