From this feeling or thought nothing could have turned me, neither general despair nor personal fear.  For I believed that the deep secrets of nature were being revealed to me; I felt that everything was immortal and that death was only a pleasant illusion.  But I really did not think very much about it, since I was not particularly in a mood for mental synthesis and analysis.  But I gladly lost myself in all those blendings and intertwinings of joy and pain from which spring the spice of life and the flower of feeling—­spiritual pleasure as well as sensual bliss.  A subtle fire flowed through my veins.  What I dreamed was not of kissing you, not of holding you in my arms; it was not only the wish to relieve the tormenting sting of my desire, and to cool the sweet fire by gratification.  It was not for your lips that I longed, or for your eyes, or for your body; no, it was a romantic confusion of all of these things, a marvelous mingling of memories and desires.  All the mysteries of caprice in man and woman seemed to hover about me, when suddenly in my solitude your real presence and the glowing rapture in your face completely set me afire.  Wit and ecstasy now began their alternating play, and were the common pulse of our united life.  There was no less abandon than religion in our embrace.  I besought you to yield to my frenzy and implored you to be insatiable.  And yet with calm presence of mind I watched for the slightest sign of joy in you, so that not one should escape me to impair the harmony.  I not only enjoyed, but I felt and enjoyed the enjoyment.

You are so extraordinarily clever, dearest Lucinda, that you have doubtless long ere this begun to suspect that this is all nothing but a beautiful dream.  And so, alas, it is; and I should indeed feel very disconsolate about it if I could not cherish the hope that at least a part of it may soon be realized.  The truth of the matter is this:  Not long ago I was standing by the window—­how long I do not know, for along with the other rules of reason and morality, I completely forgot about the lapse of time.  Well, I was standing by the window and looking out into the open; the morning certainly deserves to be called beautiful, the air is still and quite warm, and the verdure here before me is fresh.  And even as the wide land undulates in hills and dales, so the calm, broad, silvery river winds along in great bends and sweeps, until it and the lover’s fantasy, cradled upon it like the swan, pass away into the distance and lose themselves in the immeasurable.  My vision doubtless owes the grove and its southern color-effect to the huge mass of flowers here beside me, among which I see a large number of oranges.  All the rest is readily explained by psychology.  It was an illusion, dear friend, all an illusion, all except that, not long ago, I was standing, by the window and doing nothing, and that I am now sitting here and doing something—­something which is perhaps little more than nothing, perhaps even less.