...of a quietus

There she knew the language of the dead and was not afraid of it. Each added his silence to the silence of the house. One raised one's eyes from one's book, one held one's breath, one harkened to the call that had just expired. Why call them the departed when, among those that change, they alone are durable and their last looks so true that nothing else they did could ever gainsay them?

'Now I shall follow this man, I shall suffer and have doubts about him.' For she had only been able to sort out this human confusion of tenderness and harsh rebuffs in those who had found their quietus.

[Southern Mail, Saint-Exupery, A. d.]