“I’m sorry,” I said. Standing once more close to her, breathing once again her rosy perfume, I felt as I had felt when, a child, I had run down from my terrifying night nursery to find my mother sitting in the dining-room—reassured, relieved of a hideous burden, incredibly happy, but at the same time profoundly miserable in the consciousness that what I was doing was against all the rules, was a sin, the enormity of which I could judge from the very mournful tenderness of my mother’s eyes and the severe, portentous silence out of which, as though from a thundercloud, my huge and bearded father looked at me like an outraged god. I was happy, being with Barbara; I was utterly miserable because I was not with her, so to speak, in the right way: I was not I; she, for all that the features were the same, was no longer herself. I was happy at the thought that I should soon be kissing her; miserable because that was not how I wanted to love my imaginary Barbara; miserable too, when I secretly admitted to myself the existence of the real Barbara, because I felt it an indignity to be the slave of such a mistress. “Of course, if you want me to go,” I said, reacting feebly again towards revolt, “I’ll go.” And desperately trying to be facetious, “I’m not sure that it wouldn’t be best if I drowned myself in that horse-trough,” I added. “As you like,” she said lightly. The door was open now; she walked into the darkness. I followed her, closing the door behind me carefully. We groped our way up steep dark stairs. She unlocked another door, turned a switch. The sudden light was dazzling. “All’s well that ends well,” she said, smiling at me, and she slipped the cloak from off her bare shoulders. On the contrary, I thought, it was the tragedy of errors. I stepped towards her, I stretched out my hands and gripped her by her two thin arms a little below the shoulder. I bent down and kissed her averted cheek, she turned her face towards me, and it was her mouth. There is no future, there is no more past; No roots nor fruits, but momentary flowers. Lie still, only lie still and night will last Silent and dark, not for a space of hours, But everlastingly. Let me forget All but your perfume, every night but this, The shame, the fruitless weeping, the regret. Only lie still: this faint and quiet bliss Shall flower upon the brink of sleep and spread Till there is nothing else but you and I Clasped in a timeless silence. But like one Who, doomed to die, at morning will be dead, I know, though night seem dateless, that the sky Must brighten soon before to-morrow’s sun.