Suddenly in the midst of the most violent and the most thwarted passion come moments, when a man believes that he is in love no longer—as it were a spring of fresh water in the middle of the sea. To think of his mistress is no longer very much pleasure, and, although he is worn-out by the severity of her treatment, the fact that everything in life has lost its interest is a still greater misery. After a manner of existence which, fitful though it was, gave to all nature a new aspect, passionate and absorbing, now follows the dreariest and most despondent void.

It may be that your last visit to the woman, whom you love, left you in a situation, from which, once before, your imagination had gathered the full harvest of sensation. For example, after a period of coldness, she has treated you less badly, letting you conceive exactly the same degree of hope and by the same external signs as on a previous occasion—all this perhaps unconsciously. Imagination picks up memory and its sinister warnings by the way, and instantly crystallisation[1] ceases.

Notes in this chapter

Note 1 · First, I am advised to cut out this word; next, if I fail in this for want of literary power, to repeat again and again that I mean by cryst