Only myself.
I have not always been alone in life as I was that evening.

Love for me had taken on the form and the being of my little Josette.

We had met long before, in the rear of the millinery shop in which she worked at Tours.

She had smiled at me with singular persistence, and I caught her head in my hands, kissed her on the lips--and found out suddenly that I loved her.
I no longer recall the strange bliss we felt when, we first embraced.
It is true, there are moments when I still desire her as madly as the first time.

This is so especially when she is away.