4
When two people do not know each other and will not meet again, the words exchanged between them, if they are not mere commonplaces, become fraught with a strange significance and leave behind them a trail of melancholy like a mourning-veil; it is the surprise of those voices which speak to each other and will never be heard again, the fleeting encounter between glance and glance, the smile which knows not where to rest and yet would fain enrich the remembrance with a ray of kindness.
The essential image of a human life is contained in a moment like that. It awakens, hesitates, seeks, thinks that it has found, speaks a word and relapses into nothingness.