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Gwynplaine had just reached that sinister bound--the void. The Green Box
gone was his universe vanished.
His soul had been closed up.
He reflected.
What could have happened? Where were they? They had evidently been
carried away. Destiny had given him, Gwynplaine, a blow, which was
greatness; its reaction had struck them another, which was annihilation.
It was clear that he would never see them again. Precautions had been
taken against that. They had scoured the fair-green, beginning by
Nicless and Govicum, so that he should gain no clue through them.
Inexorable dispersion! That fearful social system, at the same time that
it had pulverized him in the House of Lords, had crushed them in their
little cabin. They were lost; Dea was lost--lost to him for ever. Powers
of heaven! where was she? And he had not been there to defend her!
To have to make guesses as to the absent whom we love is to put oneself
to the torture. He inflicted this torture on himself. At every thought
that he fathomed, at every supposition which he made, he felt within him
a moan of agony.
Through a succession of bitter reflections he remembered a man who was
evidently fatal to him, and who had called himself Barkilphedro. That
man had inscribed on his brain a dark sentence which reappeared now; he
had written it in such terrible ink that every letter had turned to
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