Letter from an Unknown Woman and Other Stories

But I see nothing miraculous about it. Nothing makes one as healthy as happiness, and there is no greater happiness than making someone else happy.

I will tell you the whole story of my life, and it is a life that truly began only on the day I met you. Before that, there was nothing but murky confusion into which my memory never dipped again, some kind of cellar full of dusty, cobwebbed, sombre objects and people.

But you smiled at me and said consolingly, "People come back again." "Yes" I said, "they come back, but then they have forgotten". There must have been something odd, something passionate in the way I said that to you. For you rose to your feet as well and looked at me, affectionately and very surprised. You took me by the shoulders. "What's good is not forgotten; I will not forget you," you said, and as you did so you gazed intently at me as if to memorise my image.

...My husband made my dreams come true, and because he could do that I married him." Then he says softly, as if to himself, "But what about love?" She heard that. A slight smile comes to her lips. "Do you still have all the ideals, all the ideals that you took to that distant world with you? Are they all still intact , or have some of them died or withered away? Haven't they been torn out of you by force and flung in the dirt, where thousands of wheels carrying vehicles to their owners' destination in life crushed them? Or have you lost none of them?

Sen, beni asla, asla tanımayan, bir su birikintisinin yanından geçercesine yanımdan geçip giden, bir taşa basarcasına üstüme basan, hep, ama hep yoluna devam eden ve beni sonsuz bir bekleyiş içerisinde bırakan sen, kimsin ki benim için?

There is nothing on earth like the love of a child that passes unnoticed in the dark because she has no hope: her love is submissive, so much a servant's love, passionate and lying in wait, in a way that the avid yet unconsciously demanding love of a grown woman can never be

Dù sao thời gian cũng có một uy lực rất lớn và tuổi tác đã làm lắng dịu một cách kỳ lạ tất cả mọi tình cảm. Người ta cảm thấy gần với cái chết hơn, bóng của nó làm đường đi tối lại, mọi việc có vẻ không còn tươi sáng nữa, chúng không tác động bao nhiêu đến những nơi thầm kín của con người như trước kia và chúng cũng mất đi nhiều uy lực hiểm nghèo.

I felt that I was being ridiculous, and mortally injuring a kind man for ever in my madness—but what was friendship to me, what was my whole life compared with my impatience to feel the touch of your lips again, to hear you speak softly close to me? That is how I loved you. I loved you so much, and now that it is all over and done with I can tell you so. And I believe that if you summoned me from my deathbed I would suddenly find the strength in myself to get up and go with you.

Jesentais que j’agissais ridiculement et que par ma folie j’offensais à jamais, mortellement, un homme plein de bonté pour moi ; je me rendais compte que je brisais ma vie, mais que m’importait l’amitié, que m’importait l’existence, au prix de l’impatience que j’avais de sentir encore une fois tes lèvres et d’entendre monter vers moi tes paroles de tendresse? C’est ainsi que je t’ai aimé; je peux le dire, à présent que tout est passé, que tout est fini. Et je crois que si tu m’appelais sur mon lit de mort, je trouverais encore la force de me lever et d’aller te rejoindre.