“I think he was in love with you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“He paid you a great deal of attention.”
“That’s quite a different matter.”
“Then, quite suddenly, he disappeared.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you know what became of him?”
“No. Come, Lucien, let us go.”
“Yes, let us go, Zoe; here we are the prey of the shades.”
And, without turning their heads, the brother and sister stepped over the threshold of their childhood’s old home and went silently down the stone staircase. When they found themselves again in the Rue des Grands-Augustins, amid the cabs and drays, the housewives and the artisans, the noise and movement of the outer world bewildered them as though they had just emerged from a long period of solitude.