One morning Lewis noticed her car waiting in the Rue Cambon. He looked for the name of some masseuse or dressmaker, thinking to find Irene there; but no. A gloomy house, a sort of perpendicular steppe, with church windows round a lift shaft wrapped in a winding staircase. What could she be doing in there? And for so long, too? At half-past twelve some electricians came in from their dinner hour. Lewis examined the courtyard. The mezzanine floor seemed improper. There were pink curtains on the fifth floor. He was ashamed of spying. He who scoffed at presentiments found them everywhere. Restless and ill at ease, he went on waiting, seated on the stairs. At one o'clock Irene came out with a large envelope under her arm. She was on her way home to lunch, five minutes late, like a man, not one of those absurd latenesses of some women. When she saw him she stopped, speechless. She got into her car (which she drove herself) but did not start it. She turned towards him and there, in the middle of the street, in that closed box, without any preamble, she explained herself:-- "Forgive me, Lewis ... I didn't dare tell you ... even though I couldn't bear having secrets from you. I have only been coming here for a few days ... yes, only a fortnight. Our Bank is opening a branch in Paris. Two floors of this building. The name isn't even up yet. Electric light is just being put in ... I swear to you that circumstances forced me into it. I heard recently that a Greek combine was going to issue in France a drachma loan in which we are interested. Our agent here is an idiot. One day, finding himself in difficulties, he rang me up to ask my advice. I cleared things up for him. The next day I went back to the Bank, and since then I have been there every day." "Not every day," said Lewis. "Sometimes you don't go out. The day before yesterday, that headache ..." "I never had a headache (if you only knew how nice it is not to have to tell you any more fibs). I brought some accounts home and I shut myself up in order to check them, without your knowledge." Lewis said nothing for a moment, then he began to laugh: "And I used to believe in drug cures!" That evening, after dinner (rain outside, the first day of fires), Lewis lit his pipe: "I have been thinking over my adventure this morning.... It is more serious than you think, Irene. The least amusing thing in this discovery by a deceived husband is that you compel me, too, to go back to work. I don't want to in the least; but I really cannot play the Oriental who lounges in a café whilst his wife works in the fields, or, as they say in select Apache circles in the Rue d'Alésia: to let her go down to _business_." "It is only for a fortnight more ..." "It is for your whole life, Irene. You will never give up working; you'd die if you did. Don't you see that you're a different woman since you have gone back to that Bank?" Irene came and sat on the floor beside him.