Martin Birck's Youth by Hjalmar Soderberg

It was dusk now, almost dark, and Martin was still sitting in his rocking-chair at the table and could not get up energy to light the lamp. There was a little wine left in the bottle; he poured it into his glass and drank. He had raised the window to let the smoke drift out, and through the trampling of feet which rose from below like the sound of a hundred ticking clocks he heard the house door open and close again and steps going off down the street -- they were Henrik's. Martin thought about his love and what he had said about it, and he was at once struck with the fact that at the mere touch of this bit of reality his own love affair evaporated and was gone like mist and dream. Harriet Skottë. He asked himself: "If I should read in the paper tomorrow that she was engaged or married, or that she was dead -- what would that signify to me? Nothing, no reality lost, no expectation gone to shipwreck -- just a mood burst, which would soon have burst anyhow."

He took from his pocket the letter he had written, tore it open, and read it again. "I'll burn it," he thought -- "but why burn it? I may be able to use it sometime in a story."