"I love you," she said.
"But I can't love you," he protested.
"Are you ill?"
"Perhaps ... another time ... maybe the war will end ... who knows what is going to happen!" He stifled a desire to say that he had a premonition of tragedy--that was nothing new in his life.
"You told me you loved me, Orv."
"I wasn't lying."
She wanted to repeat: but what happened? She knew better than repeat that question; she knew, from those hospitalized victims, from their bitterness, their profanity, their cruelty, their shrivelled minds and bodies, something of what it was that was obsessing Orville. She picked up a shirt, placed it over the back of a chair.
"Let me fold your things ... let me help."
"I'm putting things away ... in my chest-of-drawers ... hanging up things, as they were."
She was hopeful he might return; she began to sob; life was being ripped away; her fingers trembled as she laid a folded shirt in a drawer: he was leaving his home, leaving his birthplace, leaving his Ermenonville; she tried to include herself in the picture. Throwing her arms around him she kissed him again and again.