You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong.

But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play--I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend.

Browning writes about that somewhere; but our own senses will imagine them for us.

There are moments when the odour of lilas blanc passes suddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest month of my life over again.

I wish I could change places with you, Dorian.