I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy- - -ecstasy so greatthat I would often have sacrificed all the rest of my life for a fewhours for this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relievesloneliness - - -that terrible loneliness in which one shiveringconsciousness looks over the rim of the world into the coldunfathomable lifeless abyss . I have sought it, finally, because in theunion of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguringvision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This iswhat I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life,this is what- - -at last- - - I have found.
