“Poor Bernard--no worse than another. But desire transforms the being that lays hands on us into a monster quite unlike himself. Nothing divides us from our accomplice but his frenzy: I have always seen Bernard wallowing in his pleasure: and I,--I lay like one dead, as if this epileptic madman might have risked strangling me if I had moved an inch. More often than not, at the supreme moment, he suddenly realised he was alone; and the dismal ecstasy came abruptly to an end. Bernard retraced his steps and found me lying as if I had been thrown up on a sea shore, cold and with clenched teeth.” One letter from Anne and one only: the child did not care about writing;--but, it so happened that there was not a line that Thérèse did not read with pleasure. A letter is far less an expression of our real sentiments than of those we ought to feel if our letter is to be welcome. Anne complained that she could not go in the direction of Vilméja since young Azévédo had come; she had seen his wheeled chair among the ferns; consumptives made her shudder. Thérèse read the letter over and over again and did not expect any others: so she was much surprised when they got their letters (the day after the interrupted evening at the music-hall) to recognise Anne de la Trave’s writing on three envelopes. Various “Postes Restantes” had sent this bundle of letters on to Paris, for they had not stopped at several places on their programme: “they were in a hurry,” Bernard said, “to get back to their nest”; but the real reason was that they could not endure each other any longer. He was dying of boredom away from his guns, his dogs, and the inn, where the bitters and pomegranate syrup tasted better than anywhere else; and he was sick of this cold mocking woman who never seemed to be enjoying herself and could not talk about anything interesting!... Thérèse wanted to get back to Saint Clair, like a convict, who has grown tired of his temporary cell, becomes curious about the island in which the remainder of his life is to be spent. Thérèse had carefully deciphered the date stamped on each of the three envelopes; and she was just opening the first when Bernard uttered an exclamation, shouted several words which she did not catch, for the window was open, and as their hotel was at a street corner the motor-buses changed gears immediately outside. He had stopped shaving to read a letter from his mother. Thérèse could still see his “cellular” vest and his muscular bare arms: the pale skin, and then the sudden coarse crimson of the neck and face. The July morning was already heavy with sulphurous heat: the smoky sunshine made the house fronts opposite, beyond the balcony, look grimier still. He had come up to Thérèse, and shouted: “This is too much. Your little friend Anne is going it! Who’d have said that my young sister....” And as Thérèse looked at him questioningly: