I remember him (I have no right to utter this sacred verb, only one man on earth had that right and he is dead) with a dark passion flower in his hand, seeing it as no one has ever seen it, though he might look at it from the twilight of dawn till that of evening, a whole lifetime.

The Reception Committee shuffled on the platform while Filyuchev, the Delegation bureaucrat, was still a step up on the train holding Metved’s flowers which, hurriedly culled, showed serrated edges of dandelion. 

The morning was a sealed envelope. Madame Armance Lenot had touched her dry, white lips to it one last time, and the light had gone from it, as it goes a moment for those who shut out a love letter by closing their eyes, only for her, her eyes wide open, it was forever.

A light rain filtered through the huge elm trees and covered the park benches with a fine mist. Although it was a mild midsummer afternoon the rain had sent most of the bench sitters scurrying for cover, and a quiet air of desertion hung over the street. The street paralleled a city 

On certain days I forget why I’m here. Today once again I wrote my husband all my reasons for coming. He encouraged me to come each time I was in doubt. He said that the worst danger for me was a state of vagueness, so I wrote telling him why I had come to the Hotel Henry—my eighth letter on this subject—but with each new letter I strengthen my position. I am reproducing the letter here.

There were two kinds of truths, good truths and hurtful ones. That was what her father’s attorney was telling her, and she was listening, doing her best, her face a small glazed crescent of light where 

I was living with a woman who suddenly began to stink. It was very difficult. The first time I confronted her she merely smiled. “Occupational hazard,” she said. The next time she curled her lip. There were other problems too.

He started the book at two-fifteen on a Saturday afternoon in early December. There were other things he’d rather be doing—watching the Notre Dame game,

There was a time when courtesy and winning ways went out of style, when it was good to be bad, when you cultivated decadence like a taste. We were all dangerous characters then. We wore torn-up leather jackets, slouched around with toothpicks in our mouths, sniffed glue and ether and what somebody claimed was cocaine.

The years have put a lid on it, the principals passed into oblivion. I think I can now, in good conscience, reveal the facts surrounding one of the most secretive and spectacular love affairs of our time: