"Could he, by some miracle, keep this going? Could they hide here until the war ends? Until the armies finish marching back and forth above their heads, until all they have to do is push open the door and shift some stones aside and the house has become a ruin beside the sea? Until he can hold her fingers in his palms and lead her out into the sunshine? He would walk anywhere to make it happen, bear anything; in a year or three years or ten, France and Germany would not mean what they meant now; they could leave the house and walk to a tourists' restaurant and order a simple meal together and eat it in silence, the comfortable kind of silence lovers are supposed to share. "Do you know," Marie-Laure asks in a gentle voice, "why he was here? That man upstairs?" "Because of the radio?" Even as he says it, he wonders. "Maybe," she says. "Maybe that's why." In another minute they're asleep."