until
then. Alas, his words brought back an irreparable agony. The past,
which had gently lain dead, rose to life again for suffering. Their
former happiness was destroyed. The days gone by, which they had
believed happy, were made sad; and that is the woe in everything.

This couple was effaced by another, a young one, whose conversation I
also imagined. They were beginning, they were going to love. Their
hearts were so shy in finding each other. "Do you want me to go on
that trip?" "Shall I do this and that?" She answered, "No." An
intense feeling of modesty gave this first avowal of love so humbly
solicited the form of a disavowal. But yet they were already thinking
of the full flower of their love.

Other couples passed by, and still others. This one now--he talking,
she saying nothing. It was difficult for him to master himself. He
begged her to tell him what she was thinking of. She answered. He
listened. Then, as if she had said nothing, he begged her again, still
harder, to tell him. There he was, uncertain, oscillating between
night and day. All he needed was for her to say one word, if he only
believed it. You saw him, in the immense city, clinging to that one
being. The next instant I was separated from these two lovers who
watched and persecuted each other.

Turn where you will, everywhere, the man and the woman ever confronting
each other, the man who loves a hundred times, the woman who has the
power to love so much and to forget so much. I went on my way again.
I came and went in the midst of the naked truth. I am not a man of
peculiar and exceptional traits. I recognise myself in everybody. I
have the same desires, the same longings as the ordinary human being.
Like everybody else I am a copy of the truth spelled out in the Room,
which is, "I am alone and I want what I have not and what I shall never
have." It is by this need that people live, and by this need that
people die.

But now I was tired of having desired too much. I suddenly felt old.
I should never recover from the wound in my breast. The dream of peace
that I had had a moment before attracted and tempted me only because it
was far away. Had I realised it, I should simply have dreamed another
dream.

. . . . .

Now I looked for a word. The people who live my truth, what do they
say when they speak of themselves? Does the echo of what I am thinking
issue from their mouths, or error, or falsehood?

Nigh