The Forerunners

“It’s frightening,” Julia once said, “to think how completely you have forgotten Sebastian.”

“He was the forerunner.”

“That's what you said in the storm. I've thought since: perhaps I am only a forerunner, too.”

Perhaps, I thought, while her words still hung in the air between us like a wisp of tobacco smoke--a thought to fade and vanish like smoke without a trace--perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; a hill of many invisible crests; doors that open as in a dream to reveal only a further stretch of carpet and another door; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.

—Waugh, Brideshead Revisited