Page:Love's trilogy.djvu/177

 assure you. Though you often teasingly reproached me that I did not tell you so, you knew it by the sound of my voice, by my glance, by my whole being which never attempted to hide how precious you were to me. You came to me as something new and wonderful, so unsullied and trusting, that you aroused in me feelings more gently devoted than I had known before. In the radiant morning flush of our love I seemed to myself like a happy explorer and conqueror, free, strong, burgeoning with will and gifts for new victories.

'We loved one another, but our love was of a different race. I loved as the experienced man, and as the man with the artist's need for liberty. For you, love was all and everything in your life, you had no higher wish than to give yourself and to possess me entirely and without restriction.

'I wished to enjoy our love as an oasis in the humdrum of everyday life, but you, you wanted it to be life itself. Therefore it happened quite naturally that your young, strong, passionate love ran my less vigorous love tired.

'Our love shaped itself into something greater and more serious than I could or would embark on, and gradually it frightened me. I saw how your love grew day by day, I felt how you clung closer and closer to me, and egoist as I am, I revolted against this constant intimacy with you. I began to feel the unpleasantness of being responsible for another's life, I felt myself restricted in my movements, enslaved, imprisoned. The moment came