He pulled his soft hat over his forehead, gave me a strange look and smiled.
We met almost every day, generally in the morning when I took the children to school and he went to his office. We rode a little way together in the tram-car, then I got out with the children and he went on. During these few minutes we carried on jumpy conversations, based upon an incident, an idea, or a poem of mine. We talked on dispassionately as it seemed, until we stopped abruptly as if afraid that we had said too much.
By-and-by I began to think of him whether I saw him or not; his face, his figure rose like a blazing question from the midst of the strange, wistful dreams that I had dreamt all my life, and something that had lain within me, dull and senseless like a trance, woke, wondered, and trembled into joy.
Once I did not see him for two whole days, and my heart grew so filled with longing that I wrote a letter to him. Not that I wished to see him or anything like it. No. What I put down on the paper were thoughts that had fallen into my soul, rich, like the raindrops that fall down into a field—visions of such rare, exquisite beauty, that I longed to share them with someone.
I was most anxious to see him next day, but did not meet him, nor the next day, nor the next; on the fourth day, at last.... My first impulse was to run and meet him, but it was arrested by a sweet bewilderment that took hold of me whenever I knew him to be near. It seemed as if he wished to hurry on without taking any notice of me, but then he hesitated, stopped, and lifted his hat. I was struck by the strange coolness of his behaviour, and my heart ached within me.
"How is it," I asked him, "that we see so little of each other?"
He drew a deep breath and looked away from me.
"Because it would be very unwise to see more of each other."
"Why?"
He did not answer at once.