Excerpt from The Yoke of Pity (L'ordination) The boy, Pierre, went up to bed and they were left alone, as they had been on several evenings before, at the bottom of the garden. They talked a little about their afternoon's excursion and the beauty of the night and then were silent. They were silent for a long time. They began to feel increasingly conscious of the oppression of their mutual acquiescence in the silence. The lights of the hotel were put out. Each was aware that the other had seen them go out and made no move to return. They felt that they were sinking down into complicity. Their hands touched and their eyes met in mingled love and reproach, as though each of the lovers were reproaching the other with the eternity of time during which they had not recognised each other. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.