The fact that the woman may well have been real, rather than some stereotypical projection of M's ideal woman, is suggested by the line, "With those unseeing eyes I so begged "when alive" to look at me." The camera focuses on the woman's face while these lines are spoken. Enoch Brater argues that "what he longs for is not the beloved but the image of his beloved, the evocative metaphor he has made of her. His is an exquisite despair. In his secret ceremony Beckett's male figure all but revels in it." Because the old man realises he cannot physically recall his beloved, he makes do with simulation; he torments himself with memories of what it was like when she came before. M is not only trying to remember, he is trying "to remember the way in which he used to remember."