Thérèse, with bent brows and her hand over her eyes, tried to remember. There was the childish joy of becoming Anne’s sister-in-law. But it was Anne who was especially delighted with the idea: such a bond meant little to Thérèse. There was indeed another motive,--and why should she blush for it? She was far from indifferent to Bernard’s five thousand acres. It was always said of her that “property was in her blood.” At the end of interminable dinners, when the liqueurs were put on the table, Thérèse often stayed behind with the men, absorbed in their talk about tenants, pit props, resin and turpentine. Valuations and estimates roused her to enthusiasm. The lordship over so vast a stretch of forest had certainly dazzled her. Besides, she thought, he, too, had fallen in love with her pines. But perhaps Thérèse had been influenced by a deeper feeling which she now tried to bring to light: in this marriage she had possibly looked less for power and possessions than safety. Surely it was something like panic that had hurried her into it. She had shown the practical instincts of a housewife from her earliest childhood, and she was impatient to occupy her proper place in life and society, once and for all. She wanted to be protected against she knew not what. She had never seemed so sensible as at the time of her betrothal: she was becoming part of the family unit, part of the social scheme: she was entering an Order. She was flying for safety. * * * * * In that springtime of their betrothal they were walking along the sandy road that leads from Argelouse to Vilméja. The dead leaves on the oak trees still stained the pure azure of the sky: the ground was strewn with dead ferns, and the acid green of the new shoots could be seen here and there above the surface. “Mind your cigarette,” said Bernard, “you might very well start a fire: the soil is quite dried up.” She asked him whether it was true that ferns contained prussic acid: Bernard said he did not know whether they contained enough to poison any one, and enquired affectionately whether she wanted to die: and she laughed. He expressed the hope that she would try and be more natural: and Thérèse remembered that she had shut her eyes, while two great hands clasped her small head, and a voice said in her ear: “There are still some notions inside this that shouldn’t be there.” And she answered: “Then you must get rid of them, Bernard.” They watched the builders adding another room to the farm-house at Vilméja. The owners, who came from Bordeaux, wanted to get it ready for their youngest son who, they were told, had got consumption and could not last long. His sister had gone the same way. Bernard looked on the Azévédos with the utmost contempt. “They swear by all that’s holy,” said he, “that they are not of Jewish extraction, but you have only got to look at them! Consumption, too, and Heaven knows what else.”