In the evening Bernard and Thérèse came back to Argelouse to the Desqueyroux house, which had hardly been inhabited for years. The chimneys smoked, the windows did not fasten properly, and the draughts blew under the doors where the rats had gnawed them. But the autumn was so lovely that year, that Thérèse did not at first suffer from these inconveniences. Bernard was out shooting until the evening: no sooner had he come back, than he settled down in the kitchen and took his dinner with the Balions: Thérèse could hear the clatter of forks and the monotonous sound of voices. Night falls quickly in October. She had read the few books she had brought with her over and over again, and she was tired of them. Bernard did not reply to her request that he would send on an order to his bookseller at Bordeaux: he only allowed Thérèse to renew her supply of cigarettes. She sat and stirred the fire ... but the thick resinous smoke made her eyes smart and irritated her throat, which had already been injured by tobacco. No sooner had Balionte fetched away the remains of a hurried meal, than Thérèse put out the lamp and went to bed. How many hours she lay there before sleep came to her deliverance! The silence of Argelouse prevented her sleeping: she preferred the windy nights,--the confused murmur of the pines is full of human kindness. It soothed the turmoil of her mind. The wild nights of the equinox sent her to sleep better than the nights when all was still. However interminable the evenings seemed, she sometimes came back to the house before dusk had fallen,--either because, at the sight of her, a mother had seized her child by the hand and dragged it roughly back into the farmyard,--or because some herdsman, whose name she knew, had not answered her greeting. Oh, how good it would be to lose herself, to drown herself in the deepest depths of some populous city! At Argelouse, there was not a shepherd that did not know her story (even Aunt Clara’s death was laid to her charge). There was not a threshold that she would have dared to cross: she went out by a back door, and avoided houses; the distant rumble of a cart was enough to make her hurry down a side road. She walked quickly, with the beating heart of a driven bird; and she lay down in the heather to wait until a bicycle had passed. On Sunday, at Mass at Saint Clair, she did not feel this terror, and was conscious of a respite. Public opinion in the town seemed more favourable. She did not know that her father and the La Traves had depicted her as an innocent victim wounded to death. “We are afraid that the poor girl will never get over it: she refuses to see any one and the doctor says that she must not be opposed. Bernard is constantly with her, but her mind is affected....” * * * * *