the meaning in the words that interested them but their breath of life,
like the furtive contacts between quivering antennae) their souls
pursued another dialogue more solemn and profound. The dreams in the
colored windows, the shadows cast by the piers, the droning of the hymns
mingled with their dream, evoked the sorrowful facts of life which they
desired to forget and the consoling homesickness of the infinite.
Although it was nearly eleven o'clock, a yellowish twilight brimmed the
nave like the oil of a sacred cruet. From on high and from a great
distance came strange gleams, the sombre purple of a window, a red pool
on violet ones, indistinct figures encircled by their black settings.
Against the high wall of night the blood-like gleam of light made a
wound....

Abruptly Luce remarked:

"Shall you have to be _taken_?"

He understood at once what she meant for in the silence his spirit too
had pursued the same obscure trail.

"Yes," he said. "We mustn't talk of it."

"Only one thing. Tell me when?"

He told her:

"In six months."

She sighed.

He said:

"We mustn't think of it any more. What use would it be?"

She said:

"Yes, what use?"

They drew long breaths in order to push back the thought. Then
courageously (or should one say to the contrary "timorously"? Let him
who knows decide where true courage lies!) they both compelled
themselves to talk of something else--of the stars of the candles,
trembling in a reek, of the organ playing a prelude. Of the beadle who
was passing. Of the box full of surprises which her handbag was, in
which the indiscreet fingers of Pierre were rummaging. They had a very
passion of amusing themselves with nothings. Neither one nor the other
of these poor little creatures so much as considered the shadow of an
idea of escaping from that destiny which must separate them. To make any
resistance against the war, to brave the current of a nation: as well
to lift up the church which covered them with its shell! The only
recourse was to forget, to forget up to the last second, while hoping at
bottom that this last second would never arrive. Until then, to be
happy.

After they went out, while chatting, she pulled him by the arm in order
to cast a glance at a shopfront, which they had just passed. A shoe
shop. He found his gaze caressing tenderly a pair of fine leather shoes,
tall and laced up.

"Pretty, eh?" said he.

She said:

"A love!"

He laughed at the expres