secrets."

He put his arm around her waist.

"Ah! The things that live are only too mysterious; and you remain for
me, my beloved, an enigma, the unknown sense of which contains the light
of life. Do not fear to give yourself to me. I shall desire you always,
but I never shall know you. Does one ever possess what one loves? Are
kisses, caresses, anything else than the effort of a delightful despair?
When I embrace you, I am still searching for you, and I never have you;
since I want you always, since in you I expect the impossible and the
infinite. What you are, the devil knows if I shall ever know! Because I
have modelled a few bad figures I am not a sculptor; I am rather a sort
of poet and philosopher who seeks for subjects of anxiety and torment in
nature. The sentiment of form is not sufficient for me. My colleagues
laugh at me because I have not their simplicity. They are right. And
that brute Choulette is right too, when he says we ought to live without
thinking and without desiring. Our friend the cobbler of Santa Maria
Novella, who knows nothing of what might make him unjust and unfortunate,
is a master of the art of living. I ought to love you naively, without
that sort of metaphysics which is passional and makes me absurd and
wicked. There is nothing good except to ignore and to forget. Come,
come, I have thought of you too cruelly in the tortures of your absence;
come, my beloved! I must forget you with you. It is with you only that
I can forget you and lose myself."

He took her in his arms and, lifting her veil, kissed her on the lips.

A little frightened in that vast, unknown hall, embarrassed by the look
of strange things, she drew the black tulle to her chin.