Then presently we resumed our monstrous, momentous dialogue. I can't now
make out how long that dialogue went on. It spread itself, I know,
in heavy fragments over either three days or four. I remember myself
grouped with Marion, talking sitting on our bed in her room, talking
standing in our dining-room, saving this thing or that. Twice we went
for long walks. And we had a long evening alone together, with jaded
nerves and hearts that fluctuated between a hard and dreary recognition
of facts and, on my part at least, a strange unwonted tenderness;
because in some extraordinary way this crisis had destroyed our mutual
apathy and made us feel one another again.

It was a dialogue that had discrepant parts that fell into lumps of
talk that failed to join on to their predecessors, that began again at
a different level, higher or lower, that assumed new aspects in the
intervals and assimilated new considerations. We discussed the fact that
we two were no longer lovers; never before had we faced that. It seems
a strange thing to write, but as I look back, I see clearly that those
several days were the time when Marion and I were closest together,
looked for the first and last time faithfully and steadfastly into each
other's soul. For those days only, there were no pretences, I made no
concessions to her nor she to me; we concealed nothing, exaggerated
nothing. We had done with pretending. We had it out plainly and soberly
with each other. Mood followed mood and got its stark expression.

Of course there was quarreling between us, bitter quarreling, and we
said things to one another--long pent-up things that bruised and crushed
and cut. But over it all in my memory now is an effect of deliberate
confrontation, and the figure of Marion stands up, pale, melancholy,