FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157  
158   159   >>  
want to see them! (Pause.) What one says is mostly worthless. (Pause.) May I read them? No, I see I mayn't. You want nothing more from me. (The LADY makes a gesture as if she were going to speak.) Your face tells me enough. Now you've sucked me dry, eaten me hollow, killed my ego, my personality. To that I answer: how, my beloved? Have _I_ killed your ego, when I wanted to give you the whole of mine; when I let you skim the cream off my bowl, that I'd filled with all the experience of along life, with incursions into the deserts and groves of knowledge and art? LADY. I don't deny it, but my ego wasn't my own. STRANGER. Not yours? Then what is? Something that belongs to others? LADY. Is yours something that belongs to others too? STRANGER. No. What I've experienced is my own, mine and no other's. What I've read becomes mine, because I've broken it in two like glass, melted it down, and from this substance blown new glass in novel forms. LADY. But I can never be yours. STRANGER. I've become yours. LADY. What have you got from me? STRANGER. How can you ask me that? LADY. All the same--I'm not sure that you think it, though I feel you feel it--you wish me far away. STRANGER. I must be a certain distance from you, if I'm to see you. Now you're within the focus, and your image is unclear. LADY. The nearer, the farther off! STRANGER. Yes. When we part, we long for one another; and when we meet again, we long to part. LADY. Do you really think we love each other? STRANGER. Yes. Not like ordinary people, but unusual ones. We resemble two drops of water, that fear to get close together, in case they should cease to be two and become one. LADY. This time we knew the dangers and wanted to avoid them. But it seems that they can't be avoided. STRANGER. Perhaps they weren't dangers, but rude necessities; laws inscribed in the councils of the immortals. (Silence.) Your love always seemed to have the effect of hate. When you made me happy, you envied the happiness you'd given me. And when you saw I was unhappy, you loved me. LADY. Do you want me to leave you? STRANGER. If you do, I shall die. LADY. And, if I stay, it's I who'll die. STRANGER. Then let's die together and live out our love in a higher life; our love, that doesn't seem to be of this world. Let's live it out in another planet, where there's no nearness and no distance, where two are one; where number, time and space are no longe
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157  
158   159   >>  



Top keywords:
STRANGER
 

dangers

 

belongs

 

distance

 

killed

 
wanted
 
unusual
 

resemble

 
people

ordinary

 

effect

 

unhappy

 
higher
 

nearness

 
number
 

planet

 
necessities
 
inscribed

Perhaps

 

avoided

 

councils

 

immortals

 

envied

 

happiness

 

Silence

 

beloved

 

answer


hollow

 

personality

 

incursions

 

deserts

 
experience
 

filled

 

worthless

 

gesture

 
sucked

groves

 
knowledge
 

unclear

 
nearer
 
Something
 

experienced

 
substance
 
broken
 

melted


farther