"This evening."
"So soon. To Paris?"
"No. Anne is waiting for me at Lyons."
"Ah. When will you be back?"
"I don't know. Perhaps never. Like most men I have not ordered my life. I can change nothing, and when I cross this threshold, I feel like a miserable brute. It is odious."
He was exalted by these last words.
"And your children," said Philippe.
"Their mother is not so indifferent to me that I dare to take them from her. They have become her aim in life. How could I tear them away from her?"
And tortured by this question which repeated itself over and over again in his mind, he spoke of it again.
"I am an outsider to my own family. How can I crush my wife by demanding this from her? And then her shortcomings are no longer anything compared with mine."