The tragic simplicity of this woman who vouch-safed to confess herself, affected him as much as a beautiful sunrise or as perfect prose in splendid print. At this moment, he no longer felt any love for her; the impression was wholly literary, and with a remnant of conscience, he cursed himself for this blasphemy. Yet he noticed this: the metaphorical developments with which Sixtine had indicated her conception of the future were analogous to the images which had haunted him one day in a similar state of-mind. A fugitive state, doubtless, but one whose birth, though occasional, revealed secret agreements between their souls. If not the joys of union a great devotion was at least possible, and it is much that two beings be qualified for the same sufferings, and that if life strike one heart the other be wounded. This transitory thought led him back to love: his arms, by a sudden loosened spring, opened and, if she had fallen into them, they would have closed again on the infinite. But he was too late by several minutes: there is a very tiny space between perceived sensation and analyzed sensation: it is there that the ironic "Too Late" dwells.
"What do you know? Could you, yourself, promise me, on your life, that the morrows will not bring me the disillusion of your past days? Will you make such a promise?"
The sun had had its day, and the sky, by slow diminutions, darkened. Red, green and yellow fires blazed on the stream.
Languid under its trappings, lightly rocked by the eddy, a slow bark drew near and anchored at the quay. The stones were all covered with heavy rugs, as were the granite steps and the pavement to the foot-path where the carriage stopped. Torch carriers lined the road to the bark: by their flickering flames, the golds and purples of the draperies brightened and the water of the river assumed the color of garnets and topazes.
They were alone. Holding each other's hand, they walked in silence, both garbed in black and resembling shadows.
When they stepped on the plank, they looked and smiled at each other. They departed alone, they departed together, and yet each saw in the other's eye the melancholy of voyagers.
The bark put to sea, the torches were extinguished: in the night there was again but one lantern on the water of the stream.