One time, on a pleasure cruise, he saw a young couple, fiancés, sitting and looking at the water--the boy had his right arm around the girl's shoulder and held her right wrist tight and she had put her left hand on his right hand, and they sat like that, pressed close together. The little poet looked at them, it's so lovely to see a nice young couple like that. That these children are excited because they want more, that they are only getting each other worked up for what they can't do and don't dare to do, that they never know where to stop--no one ever notices that or thinks about that. It was very lovely, and maybe the truth was that they had just recently gotten engaged and were still satisfied with being madly in love with each other.
Nescio, Amsterdam Stories
defeat, love, marriage, modernity