It was the terrific menace of emotion, stunning us both--simply because you are you and I am I.
And that is what happened.
"We cannot deny it; we may not have believed it possible--or in fact considered it at all.

I did not; I am sure you did not.

Yet it occurred, and we cannot deny it, and we can no more explain or understand it than we can understand each other.
"But one thing we do know--not through reason but through sheer instinct: We cannot venture to meet again--that way.

For I, it seems, am a man like other men except that I lack character; and you are--_you_! still unchanged--with all the mystery of attraction, all the magic force of vitality, all the esoteric subtlety with which you enveloped me the first moment my eyes met yours.
"There was no more reason for it then than there is now; and, as you admit, it was not love--though, as you also admit, there were moments approaching it.

But nothing can have real being without a basis of reason; and so, whatever it was, it vanished.