I said to myself time after time: 'I will not love her.

It will not do me any good, nor her any good.' And then in my state of health, what right had I to think of marriage, and making a home for myself?
Of course that was out of the question.

And then I thought, that because I was a doomed man, cut off from the pleasures which make a lovely thing of life, it did not follow that I might not love you in my own quiet way, hugging my secret to myself, until the love became all the greater because it was my secret.
I reasoned about it too: it could not harm you that I loved you.

No one could be the worse for being loved.

So little by little I yielded myself this luxury; and my heart once so dried up, began to flower again; yes, little one, you will smile when I tell you that my heart broke out into flower.
"When I think of it all now, I am not sorry that I let myself go.