The night thickened--and it seemed to me as if I no longer knew her age,
nor her name, nor the work she happened to be doing down here, nor
anything about her--nothing at all. She gazed at the pale immensity,
which touched her. Her eyes gleamed. You would say she was crying,
but no, her eyes only shed light. She would be an angel if reality
flourished upon the earth.

She sighed and walked to the door slowly. The door closed behind her
like something falling.

She had gone without doing anything but reading her letter and kissing
it.

. . . . .

I returned to my corner lonely, more terribly alone than before. The
simplicity of this meeting stirred me profoundly. Yet there had been
no one there but a human being, a human being like myself. Then there
is nothing sweeter and stronger than to approach a human being, whoever
that human being may be.

This woman entered into my intimate life and took a place in my heart.
How? Why? I did not know. But what importance she assumed! Not of
herself. I did not know her, and I did not care to know her. She
assumed importance by the sole value of the momentary revelation of her
existence, by the example she gave, by the wake of her actual presence,
by the true sound of her steps.

It seemed to me as if the supernatural dream I had had a short while