"Not you," he said. "I feel it. You are so independent, so sure. Where are your hesitations? Your very doubts are challenges to truth."
"Challenges to truth," she said. "It is a nice phrase."
Driving back into the sunset they were silent. He wrapped her cloak round her, and once he kissed her hand, but it didn't feel as if it belonged to her. Her thoughts had taken her right away out of his presence, out of the carriage beyond the sunset. Where had they taken her? He wondered.
That night she came down, dressed in glowing apricot—"fold after fold to the fainting air."
As always, her clothes seemed part of her, without ends or beginnings, flowing from her, a streaming enhancing accompaniment. He asked her if her dress were nymphe émue or feuille morte. He was proud of knowing those two names. She said it was neither. He begged her to tell him, but she refused rather abruptly to discuss it. He said he loved her clothes—that he would like to know....
"Pour l'amour de Dieu, ne parlons pas robes."
He wondered at her irritability, but he obeyed.
They went out on to the terrace. The sea was black and angry, all the waves at cross purposes.
"What is your name?"