He was no longer debating anything inwardly, no longer reflecting, calculating, looking ahead. He had left the past entirely behind him, he had taken a leap forward: he had plunged headlong off the dreary shores of his solitary bachelor life into a gay, bubbling and mighty flood. Never mind what grief it might bring, never a thought for where the flood would carry him or indeed for the possibility that it would dash him to pieces against a cliff! 152
Sanin returned to his room, threw himself on the divan without lighting the candles, put his arms above his head, and abandoned himself to those sensations of newly apprehended love which it is pointless to describe. He who has experienced them knows their languor and sweetness; there is no way of explaining them to one who has not. 153
But what surprised him more than anything was to think that he could have felt differently yesterday from the way he felt today. It seemed to him that he had loved Gemma since the beginning of time--and had loved her exactly in the way in which he loved her now. 155
Truth to tell, both of them--he all pale, she all pink with excitement--moved forward as in a trance. What they had done together a few moments before, this mutual surrender of one soul to another, was so shattering, so novel, so disturbing. Everything in their lives had changed and had been re-ordered so suddenly that neither had yet regained composure. 163