“It was more especially after Azévédo’s departure that I became acquainted with that silence. So long as I knew that when it was daylight Jean would come once more, his presence robbed the outer darkness of its terror: while he slept near by, the moor and the night were populous. The moment he had left Argelouse, after that last conversation when he arranged to meet me in a year’s time, full of hope, he said, that I should then know how to free myself (I still do not know whether in this he spoke lightly, or whether he meant more than he said. I rather suspect that our young friend from Paris could not endure the silence, the silence of Argelouse, and that his regard for me was a regard for the only available audience), as soon as I had left him, I felt as though I was entering an endless tunnel, plunging into a darkness that grew ever thicker: and sometimes I wondered whether I should reach the open air before I were suffocated. Until my baby was born, in January, nothing more happened.” * * * * * Here, Thérèse hesitated: and she tried to detach her thoughts from what took place in the house at Argelouse the day following Jean’s departure: “No,” she thought: “that has nothing to do with what I shall soon have to explain to Bernard; I have no time to lose on trails that lead nowhere.” But the thought would not be dismissed; it haunted her mind. Thérèse will never destroy the memory of that October evening. Bernard was going to bed on the first floor: Thérèse was waiting until the log was quite burnt out before she joined him,--happy to be alone for a moment: what was Jean Azévédo doing at that hour? Perhaps he was drinking in that little bar he had told her about, or perhaps (the night was so warm) he was driving in a motor-car, with a friend, through the deserted Bois de Boulogne. Perhaps he was working at his table, while Paris murmured far away: the silence was his own handiwork,--he had won it against the turmoil of the world: it was not imposed on him from without like the silence which was stifling Thérèse: it was his own, and reached no further than the light of the lamp, or the shelves packed with books.... Such were Thérèse’s thoughts, when suddenly the dog barked, then began to howl, and a familiar, but exhausted voice soothed him outside in the vestibule. Anne de la Trave opened the door: she had walked from Saint Clair in the dark--her shoes were full of mud. Her eyes blazed in her worn little face. She flung her hat on to a chair: and asked: “Where is he?”