It was especially because (as the tightening of a string or the more rapid vibration of a nerve produces a different note or color) it gave a sharper tone to what I saw, gave me a part to act in an unknown and infinitely more interesting world; and for as long as the gathering speed of the train allowed me to see the beautiful milkmaid, she was like a part of some other life, separated from the one I knew by a narrow borderline, another life, in which the feelings transmitted to me by things were not the usual ones, and the leaving of which felt like a sort of inner death.