“Not a bit of it, my dear,” said Monsieur Larroque, and as Gardère began to fidget on his seat, he added, lowering his voice: “Have you taken leave of your senses? You can’t possibly leave your husband at such a time. You must be inseparable,--inseparable, I tell you, for the rest of your lives.” “Of course, father: what could I have been thinking of? Then you will come to Argelouse?” “But I shall expect you over for the fair on Thursdays as usual, Thérèse. You will go on coming as you always did.” She must surely understand that any departure from existing usages would be fatal. She must realise that, once and for all. He felt sure he could depend upon her, she had done the family enough harm already. “You must do exactly what your husband tells you, and then you won’t go far wrong.” And he hurried her into the carriage. Thérèse noticed the lawyer’s outstretched hand, with its coarse dark nails: “All’s well that ends well,” said he, and indeed he really meant it. If the case had gone any further he would not have got much out of it. The family would have called in Maître Peyrecave of the Bordeaux Bar: so everything was for the best. CHAPTER II Thérèse loved the musty leathery smell of old carriages: and she did not mind having left her cigarettes behind, for she hated smoking in the dark. The carriage lamps lit up the sloping banks each side of the road, a strip of ferns and undergrowth, and the feet of the giant pines. At intervals, heaps of stones by the wayside cut across the moving shadow of the carriage. Sometimes a country cart passed them, and the mules instinctively moved to the right-hand side of the road without a sign from the sleeping muleteer. Thérèse began to feel that she would never reach Argelouse; she hoped she never would. It was more than an hour in the carriage to Nizan, where she got into the little local train that stopped, heaven knows how long, at every station. And from Saint Clair, where she got out, to Argelouse, she had to drive ten miles in a trap, for the road was such that no car could be driven along it at night. Fate could rise up at any one of these stages and set her free. Thérèse indulged herself with the fancy that had come over her the day before the Judge had given his decision, supposing the charge against her had been confirmed: the possibility of an earthquake. She took off her hat, leaned her pale cheeks and little throbbing head against the pungent leather, and let her body sway to the jolting of the carriage. Until that evening she had been living on her nerves: now that she was safe she began to realise the extent of her exhaustion. Her hollow cheeks, gaunt cheek-bones, sunken lips, and low broad forehead, were surely the features of one convicted,--although her fellow-men had not pronounced her guilty,--convicted and condemned to eternal solitude. That charm of hers, which every one used to say was irresistible,--was it not the