And a perception of infinite loss, as if the limitless
heavens above this earth and below to the very uttermost star were
just one boundless cavity from which delight had fled. . . .
"Of course I had lost her. I knew it with absolute certainty. I
knew it from her insecure temperament, her adventurousness, her
needs. I knew it from every line she had written me in the last
three months. I knew it intuitively. She had been unfaithful. She
must have been unfaithful.
"What had I been dreaming about to think that it would not be so?"
21
"Now let me write down plainly what I think of these matters. Let
me be at least honest with myself, whatever self-contradictions I
may have been led into by force of my passions. Always I have
despised jealousy. . . .
"Only by the conquest of four natural limitations is the
aristocratic life to be achieved. They come in a certain order, and
in that order the spirit of man is armed against them less and less
efficiently. Of fear and my struggle against fear I have told
already. I am fearful.
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