Conflans is a riverside settlement on the route back to Paris that becomes part of a decisive passage in Eveline Hutchins and Paul Johnson’s relationship. After Eveline tells Paul she is pregnant during a ferry crossing of the Seine, the two reach the opposite bank and walk through Conflans toward the railway station. The place marks the transition from a day’s walk to the immediate reckoning with their changed future.

Setting and Approach

Conflans appears during a Sunday excursion in June. Eveline and Paul have walked through the forest at St. Germain; she has been overcome by spells of nausea and weakness, and has needed to lie down several times. Their route brings them to a small settlement on the Seine, whose fast-moving water is streaked green and lilac in the afternoon light and rises to the low banks lined with huge poplars. An old man rows them across on a small ferry, which Eveline calls Father Time.

The Journey Through Conflans

The pregnancy is disclosed halfway across the river, before the pair reach Conflans. Paul responds that they should marry and says he will find out what permission is required for marriage in the American Expeditionary Forces. Once they reach the other bank, they walk up through Conflans to the railway station to catch a train back to Paris. The town is thus a route between the ferry crossing and the return journey, rather than the site of the disclosure itself.

Narrative Significance

The walk through Conflans carries the couple from the shock of the news into the practical and emotional consequences of it. Paul worries that the pregnancy changes his plans; Eveline dryly observes that it changes hers too. At the station, she tells him she wants to have the child and that they must go through everything in life. They board a third-class compartment and sit in silence, their knees touching, until the train enters a tunnel and Paul’s face disappears from Eveline’s view. Conflans belongs to this pause between revelation and an uncertain future: a named point on the return route, while the river crossing and the train journey give the sequence its shape.