Perhaps he understood for the first time how bitterly she had felt her brother's death, and how deeply she must be suffering, now that she knew herself to be face to face with his murderer.
She stole a quick glance at him, through her tears.

She was deeply penitent for what she had said.

It almost seemed to her as if a dual nature was at war within her.
The mention of her brother's name, the recollection of that awful night beside his dead body, of those four years whilst she watched her father's moribund reason slowly wandering towards the grave, seemed to rouse in her a spirit of rebellion, and of evil, which she felt was not entirely of herself.
The woods had become quite silent.

It was late afternoon, and they had gradually wandered farther and farther away from pretty sylvan Suresness, towards great, anarchic, deathdealing Paris.

In this part of the woods the birds had left their homes; the trees, shorn of their lower branches looked like gaunt spectres, raising melancholy heads towards the relentless, silent sky.
In the distance, from behind the barriers, a couple of miles away, the boom of a gun was heard.
"They are closing the barriers," he said quietly after a long pause.