“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. The only thing I know is that you can’t tell me what to do.”
“No, I can’t.”
“But perhaps I can tell you.”
She put down her cup and looked at him with a sort of grave kindness that he had never seen in her face before.
“What to do?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“Give up loving the white angel. Perhaps it isn’t there. Perhaps it doesn’t exist. And if it does—perhaps it’s a poor, feeble thing that’s no good to me, no good to me.”
Suddenly she put her arms on the back of the couch, leaned her face on them and began to cry gently.