I loved Hania with all the power of a youthful soul; I deified her; I loved her with the love which is only in heaven. I loved her form, her eyes, every hair of her head, the sound of her words. I loved every bit of her dress. I loved the air which she breathed; that love pervaded me through and through, and was not only in my heart, but in my whole being. I lived only in her and through her; that love flowed in me as my blood; it radiated from me as the warmth of my body. For others something besides love might exist; for me the whole world existed in love; there was nothing beyond it. To the world I was blind, deaf, and indifferent, for my reason and senses were held by that single feeling. I felt that I was blazing like a lighted torch, that that flame was devouring me, that I was dying. What was that love? A mighty voice, a mighty calling of one soul to another, "My deified, my sacred one, my love, hear me!" I did not inquire what had happened, for I understood that not to me, not to me, was Hania answering that heart question. In the midst of indifferent people, a man thirsting for love wanders as in a forest, and he shouts and calls as in a forest, waiting to learn if some voice of sympathy will answer him; so now I did not ask any longer what had happened, for beside my own love and my own useless shouting, I felt and overheard two voices in sympathy, the voices of Selim and Hania. They were calling to each other mutually with the voices of hearts; they were calling unfortunately for me, and they themselves did not know that. One was to the other as a forest echo, and one followed the other as the echo follows the voice. And what could I do against this necessity which they could call happiness, but which I must call misfortune? What could avail against that order of nature, against that fatal logic of things? How win Hania's heart when some irresistible power was impelling it in another direction? I separated from the company and sat on a bench of the garden, and thoughts like these were sounding in my head, like flocks of frightened birds. A madness of despair and suffering seized me. I felt that in the midst of my family, in the midst of well-wishing hearts, I was lonely. To me the whole world seemed a desert, seemed orphaned; the heaven above me was so indifferent to the wrong done by people that in spite of me one thought beyond others mastered me, swallowed everything, and covered me with its gloomy peace. The name of it was death. And then, an escape from that vicious circle, an end to sufferings, an end of all that sad comedy, a cutting of all the painful knots binding the soul, and repose after torture,--ah! that repose, for which I was so thirsty, that dark repose, that repose of nothingness, but calm and eternal.