All these things passed through his mind as he probed deep into his conscience and found the truth. He knew that from the first glance he had desired the woman, from the first glance he had possessed her in his heart, and all the rest had been only self-deception whereby he had sought to justify himself in his own eyes.
Thus it was, and he was forced to acknowledge the truth. Thus it was, because it is man's nature to suffer, to love, to find his mate and have her and to suffer again; to do good and receive it, to do evil and receive it, this is the life of man. Yet all his reflections lifted not one iota of the anguish that weighed upon his heart; and now he comprehended the true meaning of that anguish: it was the bitterness of death, for to renounce love and the possession of Agnes was to renounce life itself. Then his thoughts went further: "Was not even this vain and futile? When the momentary pleasure of love is past, the spirit resumes mastery over itself, and, with a more intense longing for solitude than before, it takes refuge again within its prison-house, the mortal body that clothes it. Why, therefore, should he be made unhappy by this loneliness? Had he not accepted and endured it for so many years, all the best years of his life? Even supposing he could really escape with Agnes and marry her, would he not always be alone within himself just the same...?"
Yet the mere fact of pronouncing her name, the bare idea of the possibility of living with her, made him spring up in a fever of excitement. In imagination again he saw her stretched beside him, in imagination he held out his arms to draw her close to him, slender and supple as a reed in the stream; he whispered sweet words into the little hollow behind her ear, covered his face with her loosened hair, warm and scented like the flowers of the wild saffron. And biting hard into his pillow, he repeated to her all the Song of Songs, and when this was ended he told her he would come back to her the next day, that he was glad to grieve his mother and his God, glad that he had sworn an oath and given himself over to remorse, to superstition and to fear, for now he could break loose from everything and return to her.