And the door shut after her.
CHAPTER IV
That night I passed in a state, mostly open-eyed, I believe, but
always on the border between dreams and waking. The only thing
absolutely absent from it was the feeling of rest. The usual
sufferings of a youth in love had nothing to do with it. I could
leave her, go away from her, remain away from her, without an added
pang or any augmented consciousness of that torturing sentiment of
distance so acute that often it ends by wearing itself out in a few
days. Far or near was all one to me, as if one could never get any
further but also never any nearer to her secret: the state like
that of some strange wild faiths that get hold of mankind with the
cruel mystic grip of unattainable perfection, robbing them of both
liberty and felicity on earth. A faith presents one with some
hope, though. But I had no hope, and not even desire as a thing
outside myself, that would come and go, exhaust or excite. It was
in me just like life was in me; that life of which a popular saying
affirms that "it is sweet." For the general wisdom of mankind will
always stop short on the limit of the formidable.
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