Spoken like a man quite adept at it, all the same.

[ An answer outlined, clearer than one spoken. It softens the line of his brow in the telling. There had been a reason so circuitous a nature had once drawn him, and Bastien's now serves a pleasant reminder. ]

One sketches the shape of one's heart only in verse, then, or song, or flowers pressed into letters or books. And there is some exquisite joy in being known by another from so scant an offering. But at the risk of an incomplete understanding. Of never being known at all.

[ Of tragedy. ]

Or one chooses a love that speaks what it is. Is that truer, do you think?