and little hands and little feet! At times it haunts me. It comes and says, Why wasn't I given life? I can hear it in the night.... The world is full of such little ghosts, dear lover—little things that asked for life and were refused. They clamour to me. It's like a little fist beating at my heart. Love children, beautiful children. Little cold hands that tear at my heart! Oh, my heart and my lord!” She was holding my arm with both her hands and weeping against it, and now she drew herself to my shoulder and wept and sobbed in my embrace. “I shall never sit with your child on my knee and you beside me-never, and I am a woman and your lover!...”
2
But the profound impossibility of our relation was