“Henri thinks it is better not.... Because of our boy ... of Addie....”
The keen hope had flashed for only a second, swiftly, with its dizzying rays....
Uttered it would never be.... To have found in silence: alas, that was all illusion ... a dream ... when one is very young....
“He is right,” he said, in a low voice.
“Is he right?” she asked, sadly. And, more firmly, she repeated, “Yes, he is right....”
“I should have been sorry ... for Addie’s sake,” he said.
“Yes,” she repeated, as though in a trance. “I should have been sorry for Addie’s sake. But I had thought that I should be able to live at last—my God, at last!—in absolute truth and sincerity.... and not in a narrow ring of convention, not in terror of people and what they may think absurd and cannot understand ... and ... and....”
“And...?” he asked.
“And ... in that thought, in that hope ... I had forgotten my boy. And yet he is the reality!”
“And yet he ... is the reality.”