I said that I must rest before the guests arrive. I must be alone for a little to collect myself for the joy that is greater than joy.
For my joy is more than bliss. There is nothing so great, there cannot be anything greater than my joy.
The flowers are risen from the dead. The yellow butterfly blossoms.
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I almost wish it was over. I don’t know myself what it is, but I wish it was over.
That, I wish over, and I don’t know what it is. I see something beyond the barrier, and I don’t see it. It is not death, but there is something that hurts more than death.
And the evening was the happiest of my life.
Perhaps it is nothing at all. Perhaps it is only my heart breaking for happiness, but can it hurt so much when one’s heart breaks for happiness?
It was at the moment when you went out at the door. Magna Wellmann turned her head and said, “That was the evening of the year,” and you nodded. Then was it. It felt as if all my joy had suddenly been hemmed up in a coffin and couldn’t breathe. Henry asked, “Are you ill, you look so strange, and you have been beaming the whole evening as if you had light inside you....” That was true. I had light, yes, light burning within me, and now it is extinguished.
I must gather myself together. I must cherish and hoard my happy evening. It is wrong to think such things, but I am glad that Henry had to read the treatise this evening. I mean....