“now that she realized she had been waiting for him—she did not like that.”

“Now she realized she had never been kissed before. Not really. Not like this.Ah, never like this.”

“nothing yet. I've been waiting.""for what?"she made no response. she could not tell him that she had been waiting for him.”

“She had loved him for such a long time, she thought. How was it that she did now know him at all?”

“He was gone and did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth.”

“She smiled. She knew she was dying. But it did not matter any longer. She had known something which no human words could ever tell and she knew it now. She had been awaiting it and she felt it, as if it had been, as if she had lived it. Life had been, if only because she had known it could be, and she felt it now as a hymn without sound, deep under the little whole that dripped red drops into the snow, deeper than that from which the red drops came. A moment or an eternity- did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist. She smiled, her last smile, to so much that had been possible.”