then she
also became the mouth-piece of the mysterious force forever hovering
near us; of that perverse inspiration, wandering capricious and
uncontrollable, like a gust of wind.

"What is the good of this, Alvan? . . . You know why I came back. . . .
You know that I could not . . ."

He interrupted her with irritation.

"Then! what's this?" he asked, pointing downwards at the torn letter.

"That's a mistake," she said hurriedly, in a muffled voice.

This answer amazed him. He remained speechless, staring at her. He had
half a mind to burst into a laugh. It ended in a smile as involuntary as
a grimace of pain.

"A mistake . . ." he began, slowly, and then found himself unable to say
another word.

"Yes . . . it was honest," she said very low, as if speaking to the
memory of a feeling in a remote past.

He exploded.

"Curse your honesty! . . . Is there any honesty in all this! . . . When
did you begin to be honest? Why are you here? What are you now? . . .
Still honest? . . ."

He walked at her, raging, as if blind; during these three quick strides
he lost touch of the material world and was whirled interminably through
a kind of empty universe made up of nothing but fury and anguish, till
he came suddenly upon her face--very close to his. He stopped short, and
all at once seemed to remember something heard ages ago.

"You don't know the meaning of the word," he shouted.

She did not flinch. He perceived with fear that everything around him
was still. She did not move a hair's breadth; his own body did not stir.
An imperturbable calm enveloped their two motionless figures, the house,
the town, all the world--and the trifling tempest of his feelings. The
violence of the short tumult within him had been such as could well have
shattered all creation; and yet nothing was changed. He faced his wife
in the familiar room in his own house. It had not fallen. And right and
left all the innumerable dwellings, standing shoulder to shoulder,
had resisted the shock of his passion, had presented, unmoved, to the
loneliness of his trouble, the grim silence of walls, the impenetrable
and polished discretion of closed doors and curtained windows.
Immobility and silence pressed on him, assailed him, like two
accomplices of the immovable and mute woman before his eyes. He was
suddenly vanquished. He was shown his impotence. He was soothed by the
breath of a corrupt resignation coming to him through the subtle irony
of the