She tried to recover her serenity by resuming her painting. That was her great remedy for all the petty ills of external life; but it was powerless that day; the terror which that passion aroused in her assailed her in the purest and most private sanctuary of her present life. "Two pleasures disturbed or destroyed," she said to herself, throwing away her brush and taking up the letter: "work and friendship." She passed the rest of the day without making up her mind to anything. But one point was perfectly clear in her mind, the determination to say no; but she proposed that it should be no in reality, and was not bent upon announcing her decision in hot haste, with the timorous abruptness of the woman who is afraid of succumbing unless she makes haste to barricade the door. How to say that no from which there should be no appeal, which should leave no hope behind, yet should not be like a red-hot iron on the sweet memory of friendship, was a hard and bitter problem for her to solve. That memory was her own love; when one has the body of a dearly loved one to bury, one cannot decide, without bitter sorrow, to place a white cloth over the face and bestow the body in the common grave. You would fain embalm it in a grave of its own, which you could look upon from time to time, praying for the soul of him whose dust it contains. Darkness came upon her before she had hit upon any expedient for denying herself without inflicting too much pain. Catherine, seeing that she dined with little appetite, asked her anxiously if she were ill. "No," she replied, "I have something on my mind." "Ah! you work too hard," said the good old woman, "you do not think about taking care of yourself." Thérèse raised her finger; it was a gesture with which Catherine was familiar, and which signified: "Don't speak of that." The hour at which Thérèse received her few friends had, for some time past, been taken advantage of by Laurent only. Although the door stood open for whoever chose to come, he alone came, whether because the others were away from Paris--it was the season for going into the country or remaining there--or because they had detected in Thérèse a certain preoccupation, an involuntary and poorly concealed desire to talk exclusively with Monsieur de Fauvel. Laurent usually arrived at eight, and Thérèse said to herself as she glanced at the clock: "I did not answer his letter; he won't come to-day." There was a horrible void in her heart as she added: "He must never come again."