“Then it’s not worth while my repeating it. No, old boy; no; I don’t know whether I shall write. It sometimes seems to me that writing prevents one from living, and that one can express oneself better by acts than by words.” “Works of art are acts that endure,” ventured Olivier timidly; but Bernard was not listening. “That’s what I admire most of all in Rimbaud--to have preferred life.” “He made a mess of his own.” “What do you know about it?” “Oh! really, old boy!...” “One can’t judge other people’s lives from the outside. But anyhow, let’s grant he was a failure; with ill-luck, poverty, illness to bear.... Even so, I envy him his life; yes, I envy it more--even with its sordid ending--more than the life of....” Bernard did not finish his sentence; on the point of naming an illustrious contemporary, he hesitated between too many of them. He shrugged his shoulders and went on: “I have a confused feeling in myself of extraordinary aspirations, surgings, stirrings, incomprehensible agitations, which I don’t want to understand--which I don’t even want to observe, for fear of preventing them. Not so long ago, I was constantly talking to myself. Now, even if I wanted to, I shouldn’t be able to. It was a mania that came to an end suddenly, without my even being aware of it. I think that this habit of soliloquizing--of inward dialogue, as our professor used to call it--necessitated a kind of division of the personality, which I ceased to be capable of, the day that I began to love someone else better than myself.” “You mean Laura,” said Olivier. “Do you still love her as much as ever?” “No,” said Bernard; “more than ever. I think it’s the special quality of love not to be able to remain stationary, to be obliged to increase under pain of diminishing; and that’s what distinguishes it from friendship.” “Friendship, too, can grow less,” said Olivier sadly. “I think that the margins of friendship aren’t so wide.” “I say ... you won’t be angry if I ask you something?” “Try.” “I don’t want to make you angry.” “If you keep your questions to yourself, you’ll make me more angry still.” “I want to know whether you feel ... desire for Laura.” Bernard suddenly became very grave.