ways of parting

When we walked out I saw the sky again after all the day's blindness -
little clouds and big clouds.
We said good-bye at Vinden's.
That is all.

I. They meet and just touch.
II. They come together and part.
III. They are separated and meet again.
IV. They realize their tie.

'you merely find yourself in the old position of trying to change me. And I refuse to be changed. I won't change. If I don't feel these things - I don't feel them, and there's an end of it.'
For a moment he stood there, cold, frigid, grasping the door-handle, staring not at her but over her head. He looked like a stranger who had opened her door by accident, and felt it necessary, for some reason or other, to explain the accident before he closed it again and went out of her life for ever.

'It's curious - my absolute confidence that I'll come back. I feel it's as certain as this pear'.
'I feel that too.'
'I couldn't not come back. You know that feeling. It's awfully mysterious.'

The shadows on the grass are long and strange; a puff of strange wind whispers in the ivy and the old moon touched them with silver. She shivers.

'You're cold'.
'Dreadfully cold'.
He puts his arm around her. Suddenly he kisses her - 'Good-bye, darling.'
'Ah, why do you say that?'
'Darling, good-bye... good-bye!'



(excerpts from Katherine Mansfield's Journal. The last one records one of her conversations with her brother, a week before his going to the front, where he was killed almost immediately.)

note: I had been pondering over this quotes for some time now, but reading Kubla's entry When they met last made me wish to make this post.