Never Confuse A Single Defeat With A

His Youth Seemed Never So Vanished As Now In The Contrast Between The Utter Loneliness Of This Visit And That Riotous, Joyful Party Of Four Years Before. Things That Had Been The Merest Commonplaces Of His Life Then, Deep Sleep, The Sense Of Beauty Around Him, All Desire, Had Flown Away And The Gaps They Left Were Filled Only With The Great Listlessness Of His Disillusion.

His Heart Beat Faster And Faster As Daisy’s White Face Came Up To His Own. He Knew That When He Kissed This Girl, And Forever Wed His Unutterable Visions To Her Perishable Breath, His Mind Would Never Romp Again Like The Mind Of God. So He Waited, Listening For A Moment Longer To The Tuning Fork That Had Been Struck Upon A Star. Then He Kissed Her. At His Lips’ Touch She Blossomed Like A Flower And The Incarnation Was Complete.

Smoking Had Come To Be An Important Punctuation Mark In The Long Sentence Of A Day On The Road.

People Disappeared, Reappeared, Made Plans To Go Somewhere, And Then Lost Each Other, Searched For Each Other, Found Each Other A Few Feet Away.

He Found Himself Remembering How On One Summer Morning They Two Had Started From New York In Search Of Happiness. They Had Never Expected To Find It, Perhaps, Yet In Itself That Quest Had Been Happier Than Anything He Expected Forevermore. Life, It Seemed, Must Be A Setting Up Of Props Around One - Otherwise It Was Disaster. There Was No Rest, No Quiet. He Had Been Futile In Longing To Drift And Dream, No One Drifted Except To Maelstroms, No One Dreamed, Without His Dreams Becoming Fantastic Nightmares Of Indecision And Regret.