me. I realize the other, the common thing--who experimented more!
This has nothing to do with it. A boy lost in the idealism of his
first worship has a faint reflection. Listen:

"I can always, with a wish, see you standing before me. You
yourself--the folds of your sash, the sharp narrow print of your
slippers on the pavement or the matting or the rug, the ruffles
about your hands. I have the feeling of you near me with your
breathing disturbing the delicacy of your breast. There is the odor
and shimmer of your hair ... your lips move ... but without a sound.

"This vision is more real than reality, than an opera-house full of
people or the Place Vendome; and it, you, is all I care for, all I
think about, all I want. I find quiet places and stay there for
hours, with you; or, if that isn't possible, I turn into a blind
man, a dead man warm again at the bare thought of your face. Listen:

"I've been in shining heaven with you. I have been melted to nothing
and made over again, in you, good. We have been walking together in
a new world with rapture instead of air to breathe. A slow walk
through dark trees--God knows why--like pines. And every time I
think of you it is exactly as though I could never die, as though
you had burned all the corruption out of me and I was made of silver
fire. And listen:

"Nothing else is of any importance, now or afterward, you are now
and the hereafter. I see people and people and hear words and words,
and I forget them the moment they have gone, the second they are
still. But I haven't lost an inflection of your voice. When I work
in clay or stone I model and cut you into every surface and fold. I