When I asked to talk to her, she said: "I'll open up my study." And that could almost have concluded things, for all I can read into it today. I did not have a study; I did not have keys. I had neither the responsibility to own a study, nor the peremptory candour to lead anyone into or out of it. You cannot propose to a girl in the study she unlocks, for she has opened the study in defence of her heart, - and what, after all, can you offer her in that private place from which, at any moment, she may discharge you?

Today, I jingle the set of keys in my hand; in a sentimental way it makes me feel newly grown up, as if I have a responsibility toward many doors in this world, and each one of them depends on me. Then again, if a bunch of keys is the measure of my achievement, what have I gained from my being in the world? I cannot open every door; there is one door, certainly, which I shall never open, and therefore the room beyond it will never be resolved. Sometimes I see the view from its window wandering along the quayside; I have no reason to imagine this, so perhaps the fact I do, without being able to accord a reason, means it is true – that she does walk there, that she did once walk there, that I could still find her there among the old wharves and rusty drums, the pieces of cement, broken bottles and ends of twine, where either the doors stand open and flapping in the breeze, or else they have been padlocked since birth, and no one has a key.