"Congratulations." You heard that — and I heard what my heart cried: "No! No! You are mine!" You smiled at what my tongue had said, as though you were a stranger returning courtesy for courtesy; then you smiled at what my heart had said, and it was a smile of another kind, one I know better than anything else...

And a dreadful fear gripped my heart with a hand of iron, and I said, before I drew back: "There is a last letter I want you to read." You understood, and pointed with your hand to a shop nearby and said: "Leave it here and I shall take it." And when I saw your lips trembling I said faintly: "It is time for me to go back." You passed your hand over your hair, bit your lip, and moved away from me... I stood watching and saying: "His foot must be paining him, no doubt — his gait is heavy"... An impertinent curiosity stared at me, so I turned and walked... alone. This is what was — and I know what will be!

I shall go far, far away... Perhaps I shall come back to my land, and perhaps I shall not; and if I come back, I shall glimpse you walking within a few arms' lengths of me on the same road, and I shall quicken my steps until I reach you, and you will look to the right and cry: "You!" and I shall say: "You!" — and so always: you are I and I am you... Six words only, and they are everything about everything...

*

And smoke rose, and perfume rose, and the perfume over-whelmed the smoke — and he wept...

And the smoke passed and the perfume remained — and he remembered.

He remembered a night when he waited for the answer to a perfumed letter, and waited; and the pain drove him wild, so he set off climbing the tree that leaned over her window, and from there

he saw her... pale-faced, beating her hand upon her breast in her sickness... And his hand reached out, wanting to take her hand — and he fell...

On the ground his mother found him, his blood running over his lip, gathering into it the pain of his broken leg! In silence she carried him home; and in silence she departed, taking him and his pain away from the house...

And he remembered how he came back months later, limping; and how he stood dumbfounded, dazed, before her house, while the earth buried that half of his soul which fate had torn out and carried away from him...

Yes: she is he and he is she — the truth of her existence!

And he breathed in perfume and inhaled fragrance... and let scented blossom and fragrance be enough for him.

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