low, and
I had to fight my way back up against the current in a desperate
life-and-death struggle.

So it seems that the bonds of flesh make mock of you; instead of
uniting, they detach, leaving each of you to wrestle and paralyze the
other's limbs like entangling undergrowth.

And does it seem that the bonds of the spirit are not strong enough
because they always lack some link or word or look?

If it were not that I had found complete harmony with another human
being, I should have doubted whether a man and a woman could ever love,
that is, ever understand each other.

The thought inspired me with supreme strength. A hot wave kissed my
mouth and ears; I pushed him away.

His wife. She was the first consideration. Remembering her gentleness, I
spoke of her gently.

To be with me he could give up twenty years of his life in common,
twenty years of attentions and indulgences, twenty deeply rooted years.
She was a frail loving woman who had once been beautiful; she was nearly
forty, which in a woman is to have no age.... Wouldn't my presence,
consequently, result in hurting another woman?... And would I do such a
thing, I who brought so much warmth of feeling and enthusiasm to what
was beautiful, right, and high-spirited?

"In loving you I wanted everything about you to be brighter, easier and
more perfect; and just when I rapturously believed I had succeeded, you
come and brusquely ask me to remove the light from another being. That's
what you are really asking me to do.

"More. The man in whose name I built my house--don't be afraid it's his
suffering I dread; I love him enough to rise above pity. But I thought I
told you that he is necessary to my effulgence; you understand,
necessary.... Remember, he is the one to whom I told the truth, in whose
presence I could live while at the same time holding your presence, who
has suffered through me without loving me the less, and prefers my
happiness to his own heart's happiness. That's the sort of man he is.
That sort of man exists. And you would deprive me of him!

"But if, to get me away from him, you were to offer something superior,
a more perfect means of elevating me and teaching me to _know_, I should
go unafraid, perhaps without hesitating. Love is the thing that
elevates life.... But you, what do you offer? Feeling, instinct.
Instinct is not a reason...."

I had risen while speaking. My cheeks and forehead were burning. His
face, plunged in the snowy cur