All the
partial loves of my youth seemed to find expression at last in a
passion that would know no change. Who shall explain the mystery of
love that time cannot change? Fate is the only word that conveys any
idea of it, for of what use to say that her hair was blond and thick,
that her eyes were grey and blue? I had known many women before her,
and many had hair and eyes as fine and as deep as hers. But never one
but she had had the indispensable quality of making me feel I was more
intensely alive when she was by me than I was when she was away. It
is that tingle of life that we are always seeking, and that perhaps we
must lose in order to retain. On such a day, under the swaying
branches of the larches, the whiteness of the lake curving so
beautifully amid low shores could not fail to remind me of her body,
and its mystery reminded me of her mystery; but the melancholy line of
mountains rippling down the southern sky was not like her at all. One
forgets what is unlike, caring only to dwell upon what is like....
Thinking of her my senses grow dizzy, a sort of madness creeps up
behind the eyes. What an exquisite despair is this--that one shall
never possess that beautiful personality again, sweet-scented as the
May-time, that I shall never hold that dainty oval face in my hands
again, shall look into those beautiful eyes no more, that all the
intimacy of her person is now but a memory never to be renewed by
actual presence--in these moments of passionate memory one experiences
real grief, a pang that never has found expression perchance except in
Niobe; even that concentration of features is more an expression of
despair than grief.
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