The Unhappiest Moment I Could Never Tell

I Loved Taking Off. In My Own House, I Seemed To Be Often Looking For A Place To Hide - Sometimes From The Children But More Often From The Jobs To Be Done And The Phone Ringing And The Sociability Of The Neighborhood. I Wanted To Hide So That I Could Get Busy At My Real Work, Which Was A Sort Of Wooing Of Distant Parts Of Myself.

And Now Such A Warm Commotion, Such Busy Love.

She Was Learning, Quite Late, What Many People Around Her Appeared To Have Known Since Childhood That Life Can Be Perfectly Satisfying Without Major Achievements.

It Must Have Meant Something, Though, That At This Turn Of My Life I Grabbed Up A Book. Because It Was In Books That I Would Find, For The Next Few Years, My Lovers. They Were Men, Not Boys. They Were Self-possessed And Sardonic, With A Ferocious Streak In Them, Reserves Of Gloom.

His Face Contained For Me All Possibilities Of Fierceness And Sweetness, Pride And Submissiveness, Violence, Self-containment. I Never Saw More In It Than I Had When I Saw It First, Because I Saw Everything Then. The Whole Thing In Him That I Was Going To Love, And Never Catch Or Explain.