In the dark dawn she heard Balion harnessing the horses; then Bernard’s voice, the trampling of hooves, and the rattle of the departing carriage. And then the rain,--on the roofs, on the clouded window-panes, on the desolate fields, on fifty miles of moor and marsh, on the shifting sanddunes by the sea shore, and on the sea. Thérèse lit a cigarette from the one she had just finished. About four o’clock she put on a mackintosh and went out into the rain. But the darkness frightened her and she came back to her room. The fire was out, and as she was shivering, she went to bed. About seven o’clock Balionte brought her up an egg, fried, on a slice of ham, but she would not eat it; the taste of fat had begun to make her feel sick! Never anything but potted meat or ham. Balionte said that she had nothing better to give her: Monsieur Bernard had forbidden her to have game. She complained that Thérèse made her go up and down stairs for nothing (she had something the matter with her heart and her legs were swollen). The work was really too much for her; she only did it for Monsieur Bernard’s sake. Thérèse was feverish that night, and in her abnormally clear imagination she evolved a complete existence in Paris: she saw once more the restaurant in the Bois where she had been; this time she was not with Bernard, but with Jean Azévédo and some young women. She put down her tortoiseshell cigarette case on the table, and talked frankly and freely, to the faint accompaniment of an orchestra. She could see the circle of admiring faces, listening eagerly but without astonishment. One woman said: “That is so like me.... I have felt that, too.” A literary man took her aside, and said: “You ought to write down everything that comes into your head; we will publish it in our review and call it ‘The Diary of a Woman of To-day.’” A young man who was desperately in love with her, took her home in his car. They were driving back along the Avenue du Bois; she felt no emotion whatever, but she took a certain pleasure in the agonised young body close beside her. “No, not this evening,” she said to him. “I’m dining with a friend this evening.” “What about to-morrow evening?” “I can’t to-morrow either.” “Are your evenings never free?” “Hardly ever ... I might almost say never.” * * * * * There was one being in her life who made the rest of the world seem insignificant; some one unknown to any one in her circle; very humble and obscure; but Thérèse’s whole existence revolved round this sun whom she alone could see, and whose warmth reached no other flesh but hers. The murmur of Paris was like the wind in the pines. This body that lay so close to hers, light as it was, prevented her breathing; but she would sooner stifle than send him away. (And Thérèse made the gesture of an embrace--she clasped her left shoulder with her right hand and drove the nails of her left hand into her right shoulder.)