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One night I sat on a hotel terrace with the woman I loved, we had just been downtown, where we had eaten at a restaurant. I had been uncommunicative and troubled, she had tried to get me to snap out of it but had finally given up, so that we had sat there as two silent people who spoke only once in a long while, to break the silence when it became too oppressive. We had been sitting outside in a yard, rose bushes grew along the fence, the roses were big and blood red. The sky above us had been blue, the roofs of the houses around us shone golden red in the sunlight. The mood at the other tables was good, many had finished their meals and sat relaxing with legs outstretched drinking coffee or wine while they chatted and let their hands toy with something on the table, a box of toothpicks, a glass of cognac, a coffee cup. We paid, the waiter ordered a taxi for us, it happened to be a minibus, and as it tore through the streets leading out of the little town it was as if we, what we were together, disappeared between all the seats. The hotel lay at the end of a long tree-lined avenue, on a low rise above the channel. Our room, which we had hardly been in since we arrived late that afternoon, was white, decorated in nautical style, with a view of the sea. She ran water into the bath, which was so big that there was room for two side by side. I turned off the lights, and we lay down in the warm water. The sun had gone down, but the sky outside was still light and hovered over the dark channel. A big tree stood black and silent on one side, and above it shone a single star. It must be a planet, I said. Yes, it must be, she said. Are we friends? I said. Of course we're friends, she said. We made love in the bedroom, got dressed and went downstairs to the restaurant, where the door to the terrace stood open. The restaurant was empty, the bartender was tidying up, jazz playing low over the sound system. We went out on the veranda and sat down at a table. The water in the channel lay perfectly still. On the light sky several stars had appeared, and behind the three old trees, which looked like a single tree from where we sat, the moon was rising. I couldn't see it, only a shining yellow column on the dark water between the leaves, but I knew it was full. A bat flittered through the air. Except for the low music in the bar, the hotel was silent. Everyone was asleep. Down by the water a duck quacked a few times. From the other side of the channel, where a forest grew all the way down to the water's edge, another bird emitted a long, hissing noise. Then everything became quiet again. I turned my head and looked towards the little town where we had just been. Its lights shone and glittered, surrounded by darkness beneath the light sky. It was a magical night. After a while we got up and walked down the path to the water, the last stretch of a long flight of steps. A wooden pier extended into the water, at the end of it stood a bench where we sat down. We didn't say anything, we didn't need to say anything, I thought, it would just spoil it, for the silence was like a vault above the landscape. From here we could see the moon suspended high above the forest, perfectly round. With no competition from mountains or cities it owned the sky. Though the water around us was still and smooth, it seemed to well up, I thought. Now and again a faint splash sounded, from fish feeding near the surface. Isn't it beautiful, I said. Yes, she said. It's very beautiful. And soon it will start to get light, I said. Yes, she said. Neither of us knew then that it would be the last night we spent together, but over the next two days everything that had lain unspoken between us came out, and we found no other way to handle it than to break up. It still hurts to think about it, that we were together that night, which is the most beautiful night I have experienced, and that we can't have shared any of it, as I thought we did. The ‘we’ I had felt so strongly held only me.