"Look at those lights," he said, pointing to those that gleamed across the water through the London haze that sometimes makes for a melancholy beauty, "and that movement of the river in the night, tremulous and cryptic like our thoughts. Is anything important?"
"Almost everything, I think, certainly everything in us. If I didn't feel so, I could scarcely go on living. And you must really feel so, too. You do. I have your letters to prove it. Why, how often have I written begging you not to lash yourself into fury over the follies of men!"
"Yes, my temperament betrays the citadel of my brain. That happens in many."
"You trust too much to your brain and too little to your heart."
"And you do the contrary, my friend. You are too easily carried away by your impulses."
She was silent for a moment. The cabman was driving slowly. She watched a distant barge drifting, like a great shadow, at the mercy of the tide. Then she turned a little, looked at Artois's shadowy profile, and said:
"Don't ever be afraid to speak to me quite frankly—don't be afraid now. What is it?"
"Imagine you are in Paris sitting down to write to me in your little red-and-yellow room, the morocco slipper of a room."
"And if it were the Sicilian grandmother?"