was the womb of his thoughts and feelings. She was his roots in life and
his blossoming. She was the only fixed point in the chaotic muddle of
things, giving a certain reality to the world simply by being in it.

He hardly ever saw her. He couldn't bring himself to force his way
through the labyrinthine tangle of circumstances that surrounded her. It
was as if by doing so, he could only reach her mud-spattered and chipped
and bedraggled, an unworthy, battered object. And so he preferred her to
live in his heart, warming and watering his imagination, glowing in
cold, dark places, gilding the tips of his fancies, fertilising his
soul. He hardly wanted her outside in the physical world. But when she
was with him, he felt a deep serenity, an absolute harmony of life.
Questions and questionings seemed remote and frivolous, the useless
paraphernalia of empty lives. There came, with her, a fullness, a sense
of completion.

He sat and thought of her and gradually he shut his eyes and imagined
her coming into the room. Her movements would be very slow and
deliberate and a little tired, as if gently, almost imperceptibly, she
were laying down the burden of her life and allowing herself, just for a
few moments, the luxurious restfulness of fatigue. Slowly she would pull
off her long, clinging gloves and he would hold his breath with joy as
she unsheathed her marvelous arms and hands. And then very tenderly, he
would lift them to his lips, one by one, laying them down on her lap
again where he could see them. And they would smile at one another--a
faint smile hers would be, seen as it were, through the veils of her
exquisite reticencies. And then because she knew it made him happy, she
would take off her hat and release the shimmer of her silvery gold hair,
a halo made of sunshine and moonlight, inextricably interwoven. She
always gave him a feeling of gold and silver and luminous whiteness, a