It is a matter of life and death for us; for the lead we gain by day on ships and railways is lost each night.

A single radio post still heard him. The only link between him and the world was a wave of music, a minor modulation. Not a lament, no cry, yet purest of sounds that ever spoke despair.

She knew this man's smile, his gentle ways of love, but not his godlike fury in the storm. She might snare him in a fragile net of music, love and flowers, but, at each departure, he would break forth without, it seemed to her, the least regret.

Mais voici qu’aujourd’hui nous avons éprouvé la soif. Et ce puits que nous connaissons, nous découvrons, aujourd’hui seulement, qu’il rayonne sure l’étendue. Une femme invisible peut enchanter ainsi toute une maison. Un puits porte loin, comme l’amour.

I did not know what to say to him. I felt awkward and blundering. I did not know how I could reach him, where I could overtake him and go on hand in hand with him once more.

No destiny attacks us from outside. But, within him, man bears his fate and there comes a moment when he knows himself vulnerable; and then, as in a vertigo, blunder upon blunder lures him.