It was nothing particular about her, so much as everything about her, and instinctively I looked aside, since I didn't want her fate upon my conscience. I didn't want to have to see her beauty in case, afterwards, they challenged me and asked me if she had been beautiful. I didn't want to know whatever it was she represented, for fear I would not be able to bear the jagged past that separated us, the division of each cell that made us different and alone.

She is as close to life as her skin, and yet as far away from it as the blood inside her; she neither understands nor fears nor guesses her insignificance, and, even if she guessed it, she would never demand anything more. She takes the form of everything; she smoothes a path; and yet she is nothing; she is like a soft oil upon the raging waters of the world.