"I can only see that they've gone."
"And I can only see that they exist more exquisitely, more intensely than ever. Too intensely for your senses, or his, to be aware of them."
"Ah——"
"And I should say the same of a still-born baby that I had never seen alive, or of a lunatic whom I had not once seen sane."
"How do you know?" she reiterated.
"I can't tell you."
"You can't tell me anything, and your very face shuts up when I look at it."
"I can't tell you anything," he said gently. "I can only talk to you like an intoxicated medical student, and it's time for me to go."
She did not seem to have heard him, and they sat silent.
It was as if their silence was a borderland; as if they were both pausing there before they plunged; behind them the unspoken, the unspeakable; before them the edge of perilous speech.