"A dreary lassitude took hold of me; Elodie's unaccustomed light-heartedness, that volte-face after her calm and austere bearing, the quiet and luminous atmosphere of my room, the breathing of the sea that lay around us on all sides, those promises scattered in profusion before the child lost and found again - all these left in my mouth a taste as if of stale sweetmeats.

I did not yet dare to admit to myself that, ever since my return to life, I had been missing the sharp savour of darkness, of anxious foreboding, of terror even."

- Jean Ray, "Malpertuis" (1943).

Picture: "Night in St. Cloud" by Edvard Munch (1890).