Impossible for anyone to conceive the torments of his nights in bed with his beloved one and estranged from her. That turning of backs, that cold space between their two unhappy bodies.
Elizabeth von ArnimShe made him think of his mother, of his nurse, of all things kind and comforting, besides having the attraction of not being his mother or his nurse.
Elizabeth von ArnimShe had been dragged in the most humiliating of all dusts, the dust reserved for older women who let themselves be approached, on amorous lines, by boys... It had all been pure vanity, all just a wish, in these waning days of hers, still to feel power, still to have the assurance of her beauty and its effects.
Elizabeth von Arnim