Vivaldo and Ida
He leaned up a little and watched her face. Her face would now be, for ever, more mysterious and impenetrable than the face of any stranger. Strangers' faces hold up no secrets because the imagination does not invest them with any. But the face of a lover is an unknown precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.
"Why am I going home?" he asked himself. But he knew why. It was time. In order not to lose all that he had gained, he had to move forward and risk it all.
"I don't see how I can live with Ida, and I don't see how I can live without her. I get through every day on a prayer. Every morning, when I wake up, I'm surprised to find that she's still beside me."
"Are you lonely with Ida?"
Vivaldo looked down. "I've been thinking about that - or I've been trying
not to think about that - all morning."
(James Baldwin, Another Country, pp. 169, 222, 328 & 378)