Not a weeping woman, Anne was conscious of an intolerable ache in her throat, an intolerable emptiness in the heart. She and Vittorio had parted once again, and this time it had hurt, as if her very flesh had been riven apart. And yet, so alone is the soul, so dumb in its self-expression, that the short drive had appeared neither tragic nor momentous. Merely unfruitful and incomplete. A malaise had lain upon them from the very beginning. A creeping paralysis had bound their tongues to trivialities, their souls to silence and constraint. And yet Anne felt as if neither of them would ever forget this night. Nor how beautiful the park had looked, like a scene in a Russian opera, with the snow blossoming upon the trees like gigantic flowers. Skyscrapers, luminous against the heavens, impregnable castles of supermen, had flung a challenge into space. Their diamond-studded windows were more brilliant than the stars. But inside the car it had been warm, even cozy. Vittorio's shoulder had brushed against hers. His profile only half visible, had leaned towards her. The scent of his cigarettes still lingered upon the air with a hint of comfort. She stretched out her hand and touched the place where he had sat. It was still warm. Some of his vitality remained as if to console her. He had actually sat there a few moments ago in the flesh. And now there was only a vague hint of warmth,--and emptiness. How could a thing be one moment, and yet not only vanish the next, but even seem as if it had never existed? Was it possible that nothing was real, after all? How strange a thing is the fluidity of time. The past flowed into the present. The present welled into the future, and swept onwards like a mighty river, towards the ocean of eternity, whence came its source. Encircling the globe in its rushing current, it carried one upon its bosom, helpless but protesting from the vast gray sea of birth to the vast gray sea of death, which in the end are one and the same. What a mystery it all was, a problem. Heavy with weariness, Anne's smile showed drearily from beneath a passing arc light. Protest, rebellion? What was the use of either, if one were only a leaf upon the swirl of heavy waters? To stay the flow for the fraction of a second was an impossibility denied even to the gods. Things were like that. A little while ago she and Vittorio had sat here, side by side, and uttered trivialities. The moment was gone forever and he with it. Carried upon it as if by a substance more powerful than flesh and blood. And now that he was no longer there, that he no longer existed In time, it seemed, she could think of a thousand things that they might have said to each other.