Theodore Dreiser. Titan (№ 194360)

Love! Mysterious, inexplicable vexation of spirit, which the strong are even stronger than weak... Now COWPERWOOD understood - it appeared to him as if in a blinding vision that the ultimate goal is fame, power, wealth, beauty, and that beauty is a fusion of good taste, innate culture, talent, passion, dreams of a woman like Berenice Fleming. He figured it out. Understood. And in addition Berenice, ahead was only the impending old age, darkness, silence.