Moon and Sixpence-W. Somerset Maugham

One day, during the progress of a long and interesting conversation on the nature of that mysterious thing called the human soul, and in which our fellow passenger had, as usual, taken a leading part, with the endeavor to elicit, as well as impart, information, he suddenly changed color, turned almost deathly pale, and for full five minutes, perhaps more, looked straight into the sky, as if gazing upon the awful and ineffable mysteries of that weird Phantom-land which intuition demonstrates, but cold reason utterly rejects or challenges for tangible proof. Long and steadily gazed the man; and then he shuddered—shuddered as if he had just received some fearful solution of the problem near his heart. And I shuddered also—in pure sympathy with what I could not fairly understand. At length he spoke; but with bated breath, and in tones so low, so deep, so solemn, that it seemed as though a dead, and not a living man, gave utterance to the sounds: "Lara! Lara! Ah, Lovely! would that I had gone then—that I were with thee now!" and he relapsed into silence. (Summary by P.B. Randolph)