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the true wave of beauty
I cannot say that she was especially good-looking. On those occasions when I saw her after a long separation, I was amazed at how this skinny little creature with such fierce eyes could have become everything for me – love, life, death, and the salvation of my soul. But she only had to meet my glance, and everything changed. First of all a startled doubts that she was loved would appear in those green eyes. At that moment it was obvious that there was nothing to love her for, and every time I experienced a wave of pity, merging into tenderness. But she soaked up those feelings like a sponge soaking up wine, and immediately blossomed into tormenting beauty that could drive a man insane a brief exchange of glances changed everything. A moment before it, I was able to understand how this essentially unlovely woman could have enthralled me, and afterwards I could not grasp how I could have doubted even for a minute the magical power of her features. And the longer I gazed into her eyes, the stronger this feeling became, rousing me into ecstasy, to a state of physical pain – as if she had thrust a knife into a crack in the wall behind which I was trying to hide and, with a few swift movements of the blade, had loosened the brick work so much that the wall had collapsed and I was left standing before her once again, as naked and defenseless as a child. I have studied this metamorphosis through, but I have still not learned to understand the nature of the fire that has seared my soul and reduced it to ashes.
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