I even love Clara, and I did Miriam; but to GIVE myself to them in marriage I couldn't.

I couldn't belong to them.

They seem to want ME, and I can't ever give it them." "You haven't met the right woman." "And I never shall meet the right woman while you live," he said.
She was very quiet.

Now she began to feel again tired, as if she were done.
"We'll see, my son," she answered.
The feeling that things were going in a circle made him mad.
Clara was, indeed, passionately in love with him, and he with her, as far as passion went.

In the daytime he forgot her a good deal.