It now seemed to them that before - and each day, that before receded further into the past, as if their anterior life was falling slowly into the domain of legend, of the unreal, or of the shapeless - before, they had had at least a passion for possessing. Often it was wanting that had been all their existence. They had felt drawn towards the future, impatient, consumed with desire.

And then what? What had they done? What had happened?

Something resembling a quiet and very gentle tragedy was entering the heart of their decelerating lives. They were adrift in the rubble of a very ancient dream, lost amidst unrecognisable ruins.

There was nothing left. They were at the finishing line, at the terminus of the doubtful trajectory which had been their life for six years, at the end of that uncertain quest which had taken them nowhere, which had taught them nothing.