Even now, when our common life is already over, I cannot imagine what would have become of us had I run after her then, and, having caught up with her, had climbed back up the stony slope and begged her not to leave me. Maybe she would have taken pity on me, as she did each time or, when, without waiting for her word, I turned away, renounced, gave up everything which caused her eastern brows to frown. Why, then, in my seventeenth year, was I unable to turn away from this common celebration? Its far-off, effervescent lights, like the electric lights of St. Elmo’s fire, were crackling in the valley into which my feet were carrying me. The celebration promised to be warm, moist with love-struck warmth so full of temptation and untrustworthy truth that her departure, severing the umbilical co
