"Is that correct?"
He nodded. "Shall I send him this?"
"In my name."
She turned away from him and, seizing a modeling stick, went to her work. Her father folded the sheet and went toward the door. Then he stopped. She did not look up, apparently entirely absorbed in her work. His eyes rested upon her with deep pain—"And yet!" he murmured—"Yet!"
He had closed the door behind him and was walking slowly across the court through whose broad empty space the rain-storm howled.
"Empty and desolate!" he murmured.—"All is empty and desolate! That is the end of the story for me and for her!"
"Uncle!"
He started from his sullen brooding; Reinhold was hastily coming from the house toward him, bareheaded, excited.
"Uncle, for Heaven's sake!—The General has just left me—I know all.—What did you decide?"
"What we had to."