" he said.

And this " no " was relentless, final, curt, like a gunshot.

Lirat added :

" But you come often ! . . . And whenever you feel like crying. . . the sofa is there. . . you know. . . . The tears of poor devils are quite known to it."

When the door was shut behind me, it seemed that something huge and heavy had closed itself upon my past, that walls higher than the sky and darker than the night had separated me forever from my decent life, from my dreams of art. There was anguish in my whole being. . . . For a minute I stood there, stupefied, with swinging arms, with eyes inordinately distended, staring at that prophetic door behind which something had just come to a close, something had just died.