The experiences of her great-grandchildren seemed shallow indeed by comparison; her own experiences seemed thin and over-civilised, lacking any contact with reality. She, who had brooded in secret over an unfulfilled vocation, had never been obliged to tear a distraught sister away from a newly-dug grave. Watching Genoux, who stood there imperturbably relating these trials out of the past, she wondered which wounds went the deeper: the jagged wounds of reality, or the profound invisible bruises of the imagination?
