On the last night of October a violent wind from the Atlantic raved among the pines for many hours, and Thérèse lay between sleeping and waking listening to its ocean roar. But at daylight she was awakened by quite another sound of lamentation. She pushed open the shutters and the room was still dark: a dense steady rain streamed down on to the roofs of the out-buildings and the leaves of the oak trees, which had hardly yet begun to fall. Bernard did not go out that day. Thérèse sat smoking; she threw away her cigarette, went out onto the landing, and heard her husband wandering from one room to another on the ground floor: a smell of pipe-smoke reached her room, overpowered that of Thérèse’s light tobacco, and she recognised the smell of her old life. The first day of bad weather.... How many would she have to live through, sitting at the corner of that fire-place by the dying embers? In the corners of the room the paper was peeling off the damp walls, on which could still be seen the marks of the old pictures which Bernard had taken away to adorn the drawing-room at Saint Clair,--and the desolate rusty nails. On the mantelpiece, in frames with a triple border of tortoiseshell, stood photographs as pallid as if the dead they represented had died a second death. Bernard’s father, her grandmother, Bernard himself as a boy, with bobbed hair. There was still the whole day before her which she must spend in that melancholy room; and weeks, and months to follow. As it began to grow dark, Thérèse could bear it no longer; she opened the door quietly, went downstairs and into the kitchen. There she saw Bernard sitting on a low chair before the fire. He got up suddenly; Balion stopped cleaning a gun; Balionte dropped her knitting. All three of them looked at her with such an expression that she asked: “Are you afraid of me?” “Didn’t you know you were forbidden to enter the kitchen?” She did not reply and turned towards the door. Bernard called her back. “However, as you have come, I should like to tell you that my presence here is no longer necessary. We have been able to work up a good deal of sympathy at Saint Clair; people think you, or pretend to think you, rather neurasthenic. It is understood that you prefer to live alone and that I often come to see you. After this you need not come to Mass.” She stammered out that she did not mind coming; to which he replied that her likes and dislikes were not in question. The desired result had been obtained: “And since the Mass means nothing to you....” She opened her mouth, seemed about to speak, but said nothing. He would not give way, lest a word or a gesture of hers might compromise a success so quick and so unexpected. She asked how Marie was. He said she was very well, and that she was leaving to-morrow for Beaulieu with Anne and Madame de la Trave. He was going to spend a few weeks there himself; two months at the most. He opened the door and stood aside for Thérèse to pass.