his mind about what the critics will or will not think of his work!...
The critics, my boy, are only there to register victory or defeat. The
great thing is to be victor.... I have managed to get along without
them! You must learn how to disregard them, too...."

* * * * *

But Olivier had learned how to disregard something entirely different!
He had turned aside from art, and Christophe, and everybody. At that
time he was thinking of nothing but Jacqueline, and Jacqueline was
thinking of nothing but him.

The selfishness of their love had cut them off from everything and
everybody: they were recklessly destroying all their future resources.

They were in the blind wonder of the first days, when man and woman,
joined together, have no thought save that of losing themselves in each
other.... With every part of themselves, body and soul, they touch and
taste and seek to probe into the very inmost depths. They are alone
together in a lawless universe, a very chaos of love, when the confused
elements know not as yet what distinguishes one from the other, and
strive greedily to devour each other. Each in other finds nothing save
delight: each in other finds another self. What is the world to them?
Like the antique Androgyne slumbering in his dream of voluptuous and
harmonious delights, their eyes are closed to the world, All the world
is in themselves....

O days, O nights, weaving one web of dreams, hours fleeting like the
floating white clouds in the heavens, leaving nought but a shimmering
wake in dazzled eyes, the warm wind breathing the languor of spring, the