“I want to be able to assume that we love each other. We can be frank then. It sounds uncomfortably intellectual, I know, but that will be less disastrous than being uncomfortably emotional. You used to think about these things. You made me think. You haven’t stopped?”

“No. No. But I have such a longing for simplicity. I don’t know why there is all this fuss made about love.”

“Because people will exploit the first excitement of it. Blake said:

He who catches a joy as it flies

Lives in eternity’s sunrise.”

“I don’t know about that,” said René. “All I know is that I don’t want to let you go.”

“But you may have to. We had a wonderful thing yesterday. We may not be able to rise to it again.”

“I don’t care about that. I want you.”

“Only because we had that moment yesterday.”

“I don’t know why it is.”