There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why, – when it did not seem worthwhile to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation.
She turned her face seaward to gather in an impression of space and solitude, which the vast expanse of water, meeting and melting with the moonlit sky, conveyed to her excited fancy. As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease – of the joy that kills.
No, I only think you cruel, as I said the other day. Maybe not intentionally cruel; but you seem to be forcing me into disclosures which can result in nothing; as if you would have me bare a wound for the pleasure of looking at it, without the intention or power of healing it.
She reminded him of some beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun.
The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.
I hope you won’t completely forget me.
She says queer things sometimes in a bantering way that you don’t notice at the time and you find yourself thinking about afterward.
The lovers were just entering the grounds of the pension. They were leaning toward each other as the water oaks bent from the sea. There was not a particle of earth beneath their feet. Their heads might have been turned upside down, so absolutely did they tread upon blue ether.
The heart jealous of the soul!
Don’t part from me in any ill humor. I never knew you to be out of patience with me before.
His coming was in the nature of a welcome disturbance; it seemed to furnish a new direction for her emotions.
Robert’s going had some way taken the brightness, the color, the meaning out of everything. The conditions of her life were in no way changed, but her whole existence was dulled, like a faded garment which seems to be no longer worth wearing.
They had been permitted to sit up till after the ice-cream, which naturally marked the limit of human indulgence.