"The Sweathearts"

The ball disappears to where the top imagines is a life of bliss with the swallow. After she was gone his infatuation continued to grow and grow. His longing for what he could never have in the first place seems to consume his mind until he started fabricating a ball of perfection in his mind. Once an idea is placed in the mind, especially the mind of a hopeless romantic like Andersen or myself, it is easy to get caught up in the excitement of what could have been instead of the reality of what is. Dreams of the perfect love can so easily overshadow flaws of the object in question that it appears to the dreamer that without the love of the other there can be no happiness. The distance between the top and the ball only drives his obsession because there is no reality to keep him in check. He is blinded by the idea of love, and not by the love itself.