“I should not have wished you to see me like this,” he said, as though her coming were the most natural thing in the world.
“Are you—all right?”
“Yes, a little dazed.”
“Why have you been drinking?”
He sighed and bowed his head, in a tired way, until his chin touched his disordered bow-tie. But he did not answer.
Impulsively Marie ran over to his side and knelt there, with her arms upon the chair.
“Are—are you drunk, Paul?” She had rarely seen drunken men.
He raised his head then and looked into her eyes, which were so close to his. “No,” he said. “I have been drinking, but I am not drunk. I am merely dazed, by death, and by life—but mostly by life. Life is so strange. Have you never thought that?”
“Yes.”
“No—no—no! Not the way I have thought it. You only know the half of life—Hanaré’s half. You have inherited, now, Hanaré’s domain. Innocent, childish Hanaré! You are the mistress of his innocence and his naïveté. But it will never—never—never be the same again.”