Dubliners

by James Joyce

The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed.

But my body was like a

harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

Then she remembered what she had been waiting for.

Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.

It passed slowly out of sight; but still he heard in his ears the laborious drone of the engine reiterating the

syllables of her name.

A vague terror seized Gabriel at this answer, as if, at that hour when he had hoped to triumph, some impalpable and vindictive being was coming against him, gathering forces against him in its vague world.

wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better

pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.

His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.