Oh if only only only we could be happy and ordinary like other people.

Year after year he wondered if he should go back and year after year felt it all recede from him past hope, past endeavour . . . He could not find his way back there.

He could go back and take her in his arms. If only he knew how to do this. But they had lost the language of their affections, they had lost the style.

The easiest thing to think was that he was going to die. This was not exactly an intent to commit suicide, though he did consider suicide, it was rather a sense of the impossibility of surviving much longer, whatever he did, whatever he chose. He felt rent apart by an unremitting mental, felt as physical, strain. When he was alone he groaned aloud.