From my Lamb.

"What a terrible and awful thing absence is! I tell myself that half of my existence and happiness is in you, that for all the distance that divides us, our hearts are untied by indissoluble bonds, yet my own rebels against destiny and in spite of the pleasures and distractions that surround me, I cannot overcome a certain secret sadness which I have sense at the bottom of my heart ever since our separation. Why are we not together as we were last summer in your huge study, on that blue sofa, the 'sofa of secrets'? Why can I not, as I did three months ago, draw new moral strength from those eyes of yours, so gentle, so calm, so penetrating, eyes that I loved so well and seem to see before me even as I write."

Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace