Then she reflected. How was it that she had written all this and why? How had she come to write it? She went back upon her thoughts: the present, the speck of the present, which was so small.... Quaerts, Quaerts’ very attitude, rising up before her just now. Was he in any way concerned with her writing down those sentences? The past a sorrow; the future an illusion.... Why, why illusion?
“And Jules, who likes him,” she thought. “And Amélie, who spoke of him ... but she knows nothing.... What is there in him, what lurks behind him: his visionary image? Why did he come here? Why do I dislike him so? Do I dislike him? I cannot see into his eyes....”
She would have liked to do this once; she would have liked to make sure that she disliked him or that she did not: one or the other. She was curious to see him once more, to know what she would think and feel about him then....
She had risen from her writing-table and now lay at full length on the sofa, with her arms folded behind her head. She no longer knew what she dreamt, but she felt peacefully happy. She heard Dolf and Christie come down the stairs. They came in, it was dinner-time.
“Jules was really naughty just now, wasn’t he, Mummy?” Christie asked again, with a grave face.
She drew the frail little fellow gently to her, took him tightly in her arms and fondly kissed his moist, pale-raspberry lips:
“No, really not, darling!” she said. “He wasn’t naughty, really....”