I don’t know whether my love for her began that night, but what I am certain of is that when a little before seven o’clock next morning we took a train, clammy with dampness and cold, I could no longer face the prospect of life without her, and that this woman sitting opposite me, pale and blurred in the cruel light of the compartment, near the window on which the raindrops showed lighter than the night – that this stranger, with a hat rendered ridiculous by yesterday’s rain, was closer to me than any human being had ever been before. – pgs. 108-109, Act of Passion

…and I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else. – pg. 277, Lolita 

The first passage, Charles writing about his memories of the past, reminded me of Humbert’s words in Lolita. Not sure if they are related, but the fact that Act of Passion came out in 1947 and Lolita in 1955 is worthy of noting. Humbert is a literary scholar, and Charles is a doctor. The language of the translated work of Simenon does not come even close to Nabokov. Yet, I cannot help but search for similarities.