Then I understood. It came upon me softly, heavily. I looked around at all those simple, peaceful things. Then I closed my eyes, and said to myself, like a seer who gradually becomes conscious of the nature of the revelation he has seen, "The infinite--why, this is the infinite. It is true. I can no longer doubt." It came upon me with force that there is nothing strange on earth, that the supernatural does not exist, or, rather, that it is everywhere. It is in reality, in simplicity, in peace. It is here, inside these walls. The real and the supernatural are one and the same. There can no more be mystery in life than there can be a fourth dimension. I, like other men, am moulded out of infinity. But how confused it all was to me! And I dreamed of myself, who could neither know myself well nor rid me of myself--myself who was like a deep shadow between my heart and the sun. CHAPTER VII The same background, the same half-light tarnishing them as when I first saw them together. Amy and her lover were seated beside each other, not far from me. They seemed to have been talking for some time already. She was sitting behind him, on the sofa, concealed by the shadow of the evening and the shadow of the man. He was bending over, pale and vaguely outlined, with his hands on his knees. The night was still cloaked in the grey silken softness of evening. Soon it would cast off this mantle and appear in all its bare darkness. It was coming on them like an incurable illness. They seemed to have a presentiment of it and sought refuge from the fatal shadows in talking and thinking of other things. They talked apathetically about this and that. I heard the names of places and people. They mentioned a railway station, a public walk, a florist. All at once she stopped and hid her face in her hands. He took her wrists, with a sad slowness that showed how much he was used to these spells, and spoke to her without knowing what to say, stammering and drawing as close as he could to her. "Why are you crying? Tell me why you are crying." She did not answer. Then she took her hands away from her eyes and looked at him. "Why? Do I know? Tears are not words." . . . . . I watched her cry--drown herself in a flood of tears. It is a great thing to be in the presence of a rational being who cries. A weak, broken creature shedding tears makes the same impression as an all- powerful god to whom one prays. In her weakness and defeat Amy was above human power. A kind of superstitious admiration seized me before this woman's face bathed from an inexhaustible source, this face sincere and truthful. . . . . . She stopped crying and lifted her head. Without his questioning her again she said: "I am crying because one is alone.