As she sat on the bed, Thérèse stared with amazement at her skeleton-like legs, and her feet looked enormous. Balionte wrapped her in a dressing-gown and pushed her into an arm-chair. She reached out for the cigarettes, but her hand dropped nerveless at her side. A cold sunlight came through the open window. Balionte bustled about with a broom in her hand, breathing heavily and grumbling to herself,--Balionte who must have had a good heart, because it was always said that every Christmas the death of the pig which she had been fattening made her cry. She could not bear Thérèse not to answer her: in her eyes silence was an insult, a mark of contempt. But Thérèse was no longer mistress of her speech. When she felt against her body the coolness of the clean sheets, she thought she had said, “Thank you,” though as a matter of fact she had not uttered a word. “You won’t burn these, I think,” said Balionte to her sharply as she left the room. Thérèse was afraid that she had taken away the cigarettes and put out her hand towards the table: they were gone. How could she live without smoking? She could not exist without the constant touch of these small, dry, warm objects against her fingers. She must have their odour always in her nostrils, and fill the room with the fragrant mist that she had inhaled and ejected from her lips. Balionte would not come back until the evening; a whole afternoon without tobacco! She closed her eyes and her yellow fingers moved mechanically as though they held a cigarette. At seven o’clock Balionte came in with a candle, and put the tray on the table: milk, coffee, and a piece of bread. “So you don’t want anything else?” And she waited maliciously for Thérèse to ask for her cigarettes; but Thérèse’s face was turned steadfastly to the wall and she did not move. Doubtless Balionte had neglected to shut the window properly: a gust of wind blew it open, and the cold night air filled the room. Thérèse could not rouse herself to throw off the bedclothes, get up, and run barefooted to the window. She lay, motionless, huddled up, the sheets drawn up to her eyes, and the icy breath only touched her forehead and her eyelids. Argelouse was full of the vast murmur of the pines, their noise was like the noise of the ocean, but it did not seem to break the silence of that place. Thérèse reflected that if she meant to make a friend of pain, she should not have buried herself beneath the bedclothes. She tried to push them back a little, but could not bear the cold for more than a few seconds. She tried again, and endured a little longer,--and so on, as if it had been a game. Thus, though it was not deliberate, physical pain became her occupation and--who knows?--her reason for existing in the world. CHAPTER XII “A letter from the master.” As Thérèse did not take the envelope that she held out, Balionte pressed it on her: Monsieur had surely said when he was coming back, and she must know, so as to have everything in readiness.