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Rh heart was still heavy with grief. He was their child; and it seemed as though something in his soul would be rent asunder if they separated, even though their life together was a lie, a chain, a yoke. He tried to weigh those words, to sound their depths, to feel them. But it was only his sadness that he measured, only the depth of his own sorrow. If they were to separate, his parents whom he loved so well, both of them, each of them, whom he had learnt to love so well just perhaps because they did not love each other, then his love, so it suddenly appeared to him, was something which they could both do without, something of no value, to either of them. That was how he felt it, though he could not have put it into words; and he felt it even more profoundly than any words could have expressed. . . But she noticed nothing in him. It was not the first time that he had felt the cruelty of life, even towards a child, a boy; and it was not his nature to show weakness. That other time, after his childish soul had suffered so grievously, when he had doubted whether he was his father's son, he had resolved to triumph over life's cruelties and not to show anything and to be strong. Now the moment seemed to have come. He remembered his first great trouble, he remembered his resolve: the resolve to be always strong after that first childish weakness; and he was able to repeat, calmly:

"If you think . . . that it will be better for both