They remained there, silent, one before the other, he still sitting near the little cradle, she standing, white-faced and trembling. There was no ill-will between them now; perhaps they loved each other still; but now the irreparable was accomplished and it was too late. She looked at the clothes he wore, which she had never seen him in before: a black woollen jersey and a cloth cap. Why these clothes? And this little parcel near him on the floor, out of which the end of a blue collar peeped? It seemed to contain his sailor's effects, put aside for ever, as if the real Yves was dead.
She found courage to ask:
"The other day, did you return to the ship?"
There was silence again. She was conscious of a growing anxiety.
"During the last three days, you have not returned?"
"No!"
Then she did not dare to speak again, fearing to hear the dreadful truth; trying to prolong the minutes, even these minutes compact of uncertainty and anguish, because he was still there, before her, perhaps for the last time.
At last the poignant question fell from her lips:
"What are you going to do then?"
And he, in a low voice, simply, with the calmness of an unalterable resolve, let fall the fatal word: