He said that his father had asked him to speak to her . . .
And now, sitting beside her, with her hand in his, he told her, without once mentioning Marianne's name, what Papa had said. His calm, almost cold, business-like words sobered her completely, while she continued pensively to look at the sky, which seemed now to be wearing a blue smile of ignorance and indifference . . . Suddenly it seemed to her as if she had been dreaming . . . Not that her thoughts took any definite form, for first the ideal vision whose realization had seemed so certain, then the morning doubts and now the disenchantment of the sober facts had all followed too swiftly upon one another; and she could not take it all in; she did not know what she thought. It only seemed to her as if she had been dreaming.
Automatically, she said:
"Perhaps it is better so."
She had not expected it!
She had never thought that Henri's answer would be the one which she now heard from the mouth of their son!
Did one ever know another person, though one lived with that person for years? Did she know her son, did she know herself?
But the boy held her hand affectionately.
And he read the stupefaction in her eyes:
