“A wind blew, from what quarter I know not, but it lifted the half-grown leaves so that there was a flash of silver-grey in the air. It was the time between the lights, when colours undergo their intensification and purples and golds burn in window panes like the beat of an excitable heart, when for some reason the beauty of the world revealed and yet soon to perish ... the beauty of the world which is so soon to perish has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.”