But still more beautiful and significant, perhaps, is the second volume of the trilogy _Les Heures d'Après-midi_; for here again a new thing has been discovered, a moral beauty exceeding erotic sensation, a greatness of feeling such as can only be conferred by the noblest experience of life. It is a book after fifteen years of wedlock. But in this time love has not grown poorer. _The deepest secret of Verhaeren's life, never to let his feelings grow cold and sink to a dead level, but unceasingly to enhance them, has denied a state of rest to his love also, and raised even this to something eternally animated and intensified_. And so his love has been able to celebrate the highest triumph, _vaincre l'habitude_, to conquer monotony and the dearth of feeling. Perpetual ecstasy has made it strong. Only he who renews his passion really lives it. When love pauses, it passes. 'Je te regarde, et tous les jours je te découvre.[5] Every day has here renewed the feeling and made it independent of its beginning, independent of sensual pleasure. As in Verhaeren's whole work, passion has here been spiritualised, ecstasy soars beyond individual experience. It is no longer an external appearance that the now ageing couple love in each other. Lips have paled, the body has lost its freshness, the flesh its gloss and colour; the years of union have written their charactery in the face. Only love has not withered: it has grown stronger than the physical attraction; it has defied change, because it has itself changed and incessantly been intensified. It is now unshakeable and inalienable: Puisque je sais que rien au monde Ne troublera jamais notre être exalté Et que notre âme est trop profonde Pour que l'amour dépende encor de la beauté.[6] The temporal has here been overcome, and even the future, even death have no longer any terrors. Without fear of losing himself--for 'qui vit d'amour vit d'éternité'--the lover can think of him who stands at the end of all ways. No fear can touch him more, for he knows he is loved, and Verhaeren has given wonderful expression to this feeling in a poem: Vous m'avez dit, tel soir, des paroles si belles Que sans doute les fleurs, qui se penchaient vers nous, Soudain nous out aimés et que l'une d'entre elles, Pour nous toucher tous deux, tomba sur nos genoux. Vous me parliez des temps prochains où nos années, Comme des fruits trop mûrs, se laisseraient cueillir; Comment éclaterait le glas des destinées, Et comme on s'aimerait en se sentant vieillir. Votre voix m'enlaçait comme une chère étreinte, Et votre cœur brûlait si tranquillement beau Qu'en ce moment j'aurais pu voir s'ouvrir sans crainte Les tortueux chemins qui vont vers le tombeau.[7]