“If we thought that the eyes of such a girl were merely two glittering sequins of mica, we should not be athirst to know her and to unite her life to ours. But we sense that what shines in those reflecting discs is not due solely to their material
composition; that it is, unknown to us, the dark shadows of ideas
that that person cherishes about the people and places she knows-the turn of race-courses, the sand of cycling tracks over which,
pedalling on past fields and woods, she would have drawn me after
her, . . . and above all that it is she, with her desires, her
sympathies, her revulsions, her obscure and incessant will. I knew
that I should never possess this young cyclist if I did not possess
also what was in her eyes. And it was consequently her whole life
that filled me with desire.”
