"She was lovely.
Look at her, he said to himself. Look at her.
He looked at her striding happily in the sun. You do not run on to something like that. Such things don't happen. Maybe it never did happen, he thought. Maybe you dreamed it or made it up and it never did again. Maybe it is like the dreams you have when someone you heve seen in the cinema comes to your bed at night and is so kind and lovely.
Maybe it isn't too, he said to himself. Maybe I could reach over and touch her now, he said to himself. Maybe you are afraid to, he said to himself. Maybe you would find out that it never happened and it was not true and it was something you made up like those dreams about the people of the cinema"

                                                                 -- For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway