The windows of the house were long and narrow. They seemed barred. She could not bear yet to see how he had been captured, tamed, caged, by what circumstances, by whom.

She shook his big hand, the big warm hand of a captive, and left him so swiftly he was dazed. He stood bewildered and swaying, awkwardly lighting another cigarette, wondering what had made her take flight.

He did not know that she had just lost sight of an island of joy. The image of an island of joy evoked by his guitar had vanished. In walking toward a mirage of freedom, she had entered a black forest, the black forest of his eyes darkening when he said: "Zora is very ill." The black forest of his wild hair as he bowed his head in contrition: "My family would be ashamed of the life I lead today." The black forest of his bewilderment as he stood about to enter a house too gray, too shabby, too cramped for his big, powerful body.

Their first kiss was witnessed by the Seine River carrying gondolas of street lamps' reflections in its spangled folds, carrying haloed street lamps flowering on bushes of black lacquered cobblestones, carrying silver filigree trees opened like fans beyond whose rim the river's eyes provoked them to hidden coquetries, carrying the humid scarves of fog and the sharp incense of roasted chestnuts.

Everything fallen into the river and carried away except the balcony on which they stood.

Their kiss was accompanied by the street organ and it lasted the whole length of the musical score of Carmen, and when it ended it was too late; they had drunk the potion to its last drop.

The potion drunk by lovers is prepared by no one but themselves.

The potion is the sum of one's whole existence.

Every word spoken in the past accumulated forms and colors in the self. What flows through the veins besides blood is the distillation of every act committed, the sediment of all the visions, wishes, dreams, and experiences. All the past emotions converge to tint the skin and flavor the lips, to regulate the pulse and produce crystals in the eyes.

The fascination exerted by one human being over another is not what he emits of his personality at the present instant of encounter but a summation of his entire being which gives off this powerful drug capturing the fancy and attachment.

No moment of charm without long roots in the past, no moment of charm is born on bare soil, a careless accident of beauty, but is the sum of great sorrows, growths, and efforts.

But love, the great narcotic, was the hothouse in which all the selves burst into their fullest bloom...

love the great narcotic was the revealer in the alchemist's bottle rendering visible the most untraceable substances

love the great narcotic was the agent provocateur exposing all the secret selves to daylight

love the great narcotic-lined fingertips with clairvoyance