She seemed to move desperately; he heard her push a chair aside.
“Oh—God—God!” she cried on a note of fainting anguish.
He felt her skirts brush past him, the door opened, a shaft of light penetrated the darkness for a second, then the door closed.
She was gone.
Luc fumbled his way to the sofa where she must have been seated; the cushions were still warm where her face had rested, her tears fallen. He spread his hands over them and shivered from head to foot.
He had never wanted her so much, in all the days of their summer courtship, as he wanted her now.
Yet he was glad she was gone, glad it was over.
She was as lost now as that other Clémence who also had closed a door on him and left him alone.
His grasp tightened on the silk cushions. Out of the depths of his pain and regret flashed the alluring vision of the phantom he had chased all his life.
“Glory!” he said under his breath, “still to be—achieved—not with”—he rose, staggering like one intoxicated—“the body”—he clutched the chimneypiece—“but—with—the soul!”