Page:Love's trilogy.djvu/178

 when I had to break out again, feel space round me, stand alone and free.

'Besides, the habit which had gradually crept into our love tortured and depressed me. Such men as I fear marriage just because it is love regulated and systematised. But our meetings, which in the beginning had all the charm of the unexpected, the mysterious, the fairy-tale, grew soon into well-ordered domesticity. We met on such and such days at certain hours, and gradually we spent a certain number of hours in each other's company every day. There was nothing unexpected, nothing mysterious any longer, only a daily repetition of the one and the same.

'Before, when you were coming to me it was a joy to prepare everything for your reception, and when we parted I asked with expectant eagerness, "When do we meet again?" Later, there came times when I had to force myself to say the conventional parting words, "I suppose we meet tomorrow?" and when you came, to ask you, "What will you have to drink?" and "Will you have a cigarette?" I hoped it would be better when I went into the country and we didn't meet, but, unfortunately, there are such things as letters. There is always some possibility for a variation in personal intercourse, while letters are everlasting uniformity. They begin and they end with the same phrases, at the most the words occasionally change places, they are posted and distributed at regular hours, they troop up like soldiers in their