kind of cage, which lets me see and hear things all round, but keeps me
from melting away.

And soon I found that this locket was made of that half of you that is
still in me, so that I couldn't dissolve, because half of me wasn't dead
at all; for the chain linked me to that half of myself I had left in
you, so that half of me actually wasn't there to be dissolved.... I am
getting rather mixed!

But oh, my heart's true love, how I hugged my chain, with you at the
other end of it!

With such pain and effort as you cannot conceive, I have crept along it
back to you, like a spider on an endless thread of its own spinning.
Such love as mine is stronger then death indeed!

* * * * *

I have come to tell you that we are inseparable forever, you and I, one
double speck of spinal marrow--'Philipschen!'--one little grain of salt,
one drop. There is to be no parting for _us_--I can see that; but such
extraordinary luck seems reserved for you and me alone up to now; and it
is all our own doing.

But not till you join me shall you and I be complete, and free to melt
away in that universal ocean, and take our part, as One, in all is
to be.

That moment--you must not hasten it by a moment. Time is nothing. I'm
even beginning to believe there's no such thing; there is so little