“I wanted ... as you are our friend ... to tell you....”
He was determined to make her say the word:
“You suggested what?”
“That we should be divorced....”
They walked on for some minutes. Suddenly, round about her, she saw the dunes, the distant sea, the sea which she had divined the night before, over which the pale gleams, the lightning-flashes had revealed themselves. Now, the sky overhead was revealed, a vague opal, with white clouds curling like steam....
“I suggested that we should be divorced,” she repeated.
He drew a breath, in the salt breath of the sea, even as he had breathed in the Alps, when contemplating those ice-bound horizons. And he remembered ... that vision ... and the yearning ... for the one soul ... the meeting with which would have been a consolation amid the constant disappointment encountered with the many souls, the thousands.... And a swift, keen hope seemed to flash before him ... not only of having found at last ... in silence ... but of venturing to utter it ... once; and so keen, so dazzling was the hope that at first he did not hear her say:
“But Henri ... thinks it is better ... not....”
“What?” he asked, as though deaf, as though blind.
She repeated: