Helena Bertels

“the love within them had never stopped smouldering.”
― R.S. Maxwell, Through a Darkening Glass

“As if she were falling backwards from a precipice, arms flailing, the ground rushing up to shatter her body and bones, the love had struck her, broken her, and infected her with a mystical sense of vertigo. All the sonnets that she had read, and all the poems, and tragedies and romances—they all took on a new colour, a new shade of light, a new clarity and poignancy. Everything made sense because she loved him, and within the space between their bodies, between their lips, the agonizing, most minute hair’s breadth that separated them, there lurked a multitude, there lurked a thousand years of time and a limitless space, there lurked Truth. She loved him. That was all. She loved him but could do nothing about it.”
― R.S. Maxwell, Through a Darkening Glass

“I like wanting,” he said. “I like wanting you. I like coveting but not having—it is almost better, more satisfying to . . . to think about how very much I want something, to envision it, to play the scene out safely in my mind but not to do it. At least not yet.” He touched her wet hair. “I like knowing you’re here, listening to the rain with me. I’d like to sleep close to you, to feel your presence, to hear the rustling of the sheet, your breath, to sense your warmth without the uncertainty of entangling ourselves any further. That would provide me so very much pleasure, that alone, I think for now, at least.”
― R.S. Maxwell, Through a Darkening Glass

“No, facts are not necessary to tell any story at all, that is, as long as somewhere among all the embellishments, within the spaces—between the hair’s breadth—there might lurk one small and stalwart bit of Truth.”
― R.S. Maxwell, Through a Darkening Glass