The lawyer opened a door. Thérèse Desqueyroux, as she stood in that remote corridor of the law-courts, felt the fog upon her face and inhaled it deeply. She was afraid some one might be waiting for her, and hesitated to go out. A man with his coat collar turned up appeared from the shadow of a plane tree, and she recognised her father. “All right,” cried the lawyer; “case dismissed”; and, turning to Thérèse, he added, “You can go out now; no one is there.” She went down the damp steps; the little Square seemed indeed deserted. Her father did not kiss her, did not even look at her. He asked a few questions of Duros, the lawyer, who answered in low tones, as though he were afraid of being overheard. She just managed to catch what they were saying. “I shall get the official notification to-morrow.” “I suppose nothing can go wrong now?” “No, nothing; it’s all over.” “I suppose after my son-in-law’s statement, it was a certainty?” “Well, I’m not so sure.... You never can tell.” “But after he’d said definitely that he had not counted the drops....” “My dear Larroque, in affairs of this kind the victim’s evidence....” Here Thérèse broke in; “But there wasn’t any victim.” “I meant by victim, the victim of his own imprudence, Madame.” The two men stared at her for a moment as she stood there motionless, wrapped in her cloak, and looked curiously at her expressionless face. She asked where the carriage was; her father had arranged for it to wait on the Budos road, outside the town, so as not to attract attention. They crossed the Square, where leaves from the plane trees were sticking to the rain-soaked benches. Fortunately the days had grown much shorter: besides, to get to the Budos road, they could go through the most unfrequented streets of the little provincial town. Thérèse walked between the two men (she was nearly half a head taller than either of them), and they began a further discussion as if she had not been there; but finding the intervening feminine presence inconvenient they began unconsciously to elbow her out of the way. She accordingly dropped a little behind, and took the glove off her left hand so as to be able to pick the moss off the ancient stone walls at her side. From time to time a workman on a bicycle, or a trap came past, and she drew close in to the houses to avoid being splashed with mud. But Thérèse was hidden by the gathering dusk, and no one recognised her. The smell of fog and baking bread was for her not merely the usual evening smell of a little town; it was the perfume of the life that had been restored to her at last. She shut her eyes to savour the moist leafy fragrance of the sleeping earth, and tried not to listen to the words of the short bandy-legged gentleman who did not once turn his head towards his daughter. She might have fallen at the roadside and neither he, nor Duros, would have noticed it. They were no longer afraid to raise their voices.