Alyosha's hands had gone to their sides as they slowed, remained there; the one still pinching the hinge of her glasses. At some point while he spoke, it fell from her nerveless fingers, the fine clatter of the lenses, the thin metal frames upon the pebbles lost in the rushing sigh of the waves.

Her living hand shook; flew to her mouth when he had no more to say. Just as swiftly, the back of her hand went to her brow like one dizzied or faint-feeling, fingers curled together to stop (or hide) their shaking while she pinned him with a wildly hopeful look. "You.. you can't... do you mean it? Are you certain you mean it?" She said it all too fast, gasped like a secret, her inner monologue spilling out. "You haven't even heard my proposal for it, I'd drawn up... and... and had plans with references, contingencies, and..."

The last thread of calm snapped with what sense she had to say something coherent, and both hands flew to cover her mouth now, and she stared at the Brucolac over her fingertips, a furrow between her brows, made by the force of Alyosha willing herself not to cry.

But she was absolutely, certainly, without a shred of doubt, going to cry.