It felt much more strange than she had supposed. She felt that she was growing pale and faint, she entirely forgot that she was to give him a box on the ear and that he was only a student reading for his examination.
But he thought of a passage in a book by a religious physician on “The Sex Life of Woman,” which read: “One must guard against letting the marital embrace come under the dominion of sensuality.” And he thought that this must be very difficult to guard against, if even a kiss could do so much.
When the moon came up, they were still sitting there and kissing.
She whispered into his ear: “I loved you from the first hour I saw you.”
And he replied: “There has never been anyone in the world for me but you.”
THE DREAM OF ETERNITY
WHILE I was still very young I believed with entire certainty that I had an immortal soul. I regarded this as a holy and precious gift and was both happy and proud over it.
I often said to myself: “The life I am living is a dark and troubled dream. Some time I shall awaken to another dream which stands closer to reality and has a deeper meaning than this. Out of that dream I shall awaken to a third and afterwards to a fourth, and every new dream will stand nearer the truth than the one before. This approaching toward truth constitutes the meaning of life, which is subtle and profound.”
With the joy of knowing that in my immortal soul I possessed a capital which could not be lost in play or distrained upon for debt, I carried on a dissipated life and squandered like a prince both what was mine and what was not mine.
But one evening I found myself with some of my cronies in a large hall, which glittered with gilt and electric light, while from its flooring rose a smell of decay. Two young girls with painted faces and an old woman whose wrinkles were filled with plaster were dancing there on a platform, accompanied by the wail of the orchestra, cries of applause, and the clink of broken glass. We watched the women, drank a great deal, and conversed on the immortality of the soul.