by flagamuffin

To come at last, and more specifically, to the case of the parted lovers, who present the greatest interest and of whom the narrator is, perhaps, better qualified to speak – their minds were the prey of different emotions, notably remorse. For their present position enabled them to take stock of their feelings with a sort of feverish objectivity. And, in these conditions, it was rare for them not to detect their own shortcomings. What first brought these home to them was the trouble they experienced in summoning up any clear picture of what the absent one was doing. They came to deplore their ignorance of the way in which that person used to spend his or her days, and reproached themselves for having troubled too little about this in the past, and for having affected to think that, for a lover, the occupations of the loved one when they are not together could be a matter of indifference and not a source of joy.

Brilliant pseudo-metaphorical reminder that idealizing your partner, or imagining them only in situations referential to yourself, is selfish, unfair and destructive.