She lay back in her chair, her hands hanging limply beside her, as if she lacked the energy now to grasp the tempting illusion, afraid of losing it and afraid of seizing it and then recognizing it as an illusion . . .
And the sultry air seemed to be pressing upon her softly and languorously until she panted and her lips parted and her eyes closed only to open again, wider than before; and in that atmosphere of ecstasy it appeared to her that the distant lightning-streaks yonder, the noiseless flashes over the wide sea which she divined yonder, yonder, far away, were themselves the swift effulgence of her thoughts and illusions and regrets: a gleam and gone, a gleam and gone. When it gleamed, came the smiling hope that things could become and remain as she thought; when the light faded, came doubt . . . yet not so deep but that the night tempted and lured her:
"Hope again . . . think once more . . . dream again . . . It may be . . . it is not impossible . . . It is reality, pure, simple reality; it will mean the happiness of those two poor children, Henri and Marianne; it will be the happiness of you two, him and you, the woman whose life blossomed late . . . It is possible: hope it again, think, dream it again; for what is impossibility, when truth once stands revealed, however late? See, the truth stands revealed; the lightning flashes; sometimes the whole
