As he held her and tasted her, and as she curved in further and further toward him, with her own lips, new to herself, drowned and engulfed in love, yet solaced and triumphant, he was thankful to have an existence at all, if only as a reflection in her wet eyes.

When I saw the sadness of your face in that passport picture I felt as you can imagine. But after going through what you can imagine I did then and looking and it and looking at it, I saw that it was the face I knew and loved and not that mettalic superimposition of our last two years in France….The photograph is all I have; it is with me from the morning when I wake up with a frantic half dream about you to the last moment when I think of you and of death at night. The rotten letters you write me I simply put away under L in my file….If you choose to keep your wrestling match with a pillar of air I would prefer to be not even in the audience.

I am hardened to write you so brutally by thinking of the ceaseless wave of love that surrounds you and envelopes you always, that you have the power to evoke at whim—when I know that for the mere counterfeit of it I would perjure the best of my heart and mind. Do you think the solitude in which I live has more amusing decor than any other solitude? Do you think it is any nicer for remembering that there were times very late at night when you and I shared our aloneness? I will take my full share of responsibility for all this tragedy but I cannot spread beyond the limits of my reach and grasp, I can only bring you the little bit of hope I have and I don’t know any other hope except my own. I have the terrible misfortune to be a gentleman in the sort of struggle with incalculable elements to which people should bring centuries of inexperience; if I have failed you it is just barely possible that you have failed me….I love you with all my heart because you are my own girl and that is all I know.

Today I went to sleep on your bed. It was like dozing in a lullaby swung on the ends of time and space.

Today I went to sleep on your bed. It was like dozing in a lullaby swung on the ends of time and space.

And lastly from that period I remember riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.