during their separations, and, above all, about how perfectly they are willing to die of that longing. Not only will it not lay down its own life for them; it does not even want them to die for each other (as one of them might do, perhaps, in rescuing the other from a burning building). Rather, its profoundest wish is that they should die of an essentially self-regarding preoccupation with longing as such so they can be liberated, as Romance itself is, from the inconveniences of a life as real beings