Their heads were close together, and they were talking in low tones. As they sat there, at that meeting of the Paris highways, under the soft sunlight, and in a slightly chilly wind that smelt of foreign tobacco, and stirred the red and yellow awnings, it seemed so strange to recall that stifling afternoon, the horizon dense with smoke, the tarnished blue of the sky, the penetrating torch-like odour that rises from burning pine-forests,--and her own drowsy heart in which the crime began to take on the semblance of a purpose. “This is how it happened: it was in the dining-room, which was dark, as it always is at midday: you were talking with your head slightly turned towards Balion, forgetting to count the drops that fell into your glass.” Thérèse was not looking at Bernard, absorbed in her anxiety not to omit the most trifling circumstances; but she heard him laugh and turned towards him: Yes, he was laughing in his stupid way: “No, what do you take me for,” he said! He did not believe her,--and indeed what she was saying was hardly credible. He grinned, and she recognised the old Bernard, full of self-confidence and worldly wisdom. He had recovered himself and once more she knew that she was lost. “So the idea came to you,” he said jeeringly, “just like that, all of a sudden, by the intervention of the Holy Ghost.” How he loathed himself for having questioned Thérèse. It meant the loss of all the accumulated contempt that he had heaped upon the wretched woman. She was raising her head again! Why had he yielded to that sudden longing to understand? Just as if there was anything to understand in these hysterical creatures. But he had spoken without thinking.... “Listen, Bernard, I’m not telling you this to persuade you of my innocence, far from it!” Her self-accusation was full of a strange and passionate sincerity: to have been able to act, as she had done, in a kind of trance, for months past, she must, she thought, have conceived and brooded over thoughts of crime. Besides, when once the deed was done, with what savage lucidity of purpose and persistence she had pursued her aim! “I only felt cruel when my hand trembled. I hated myself for prolonging your sufferings; I felt I must bring the business to an end, and quickly too! I obeyed a dreadful sense of duty,--yes, it was almost like a duty.” “Oh, these are phrases,” Bernard broke in. “Just try and tell me, once and for all, what you wanted: come, now!” “What I wanted? Indeed it would be easier to say what I did not want. I did not want to play a part, move like an automaton, talk in formulæ, be eternally false to a Thérèse who.... No, Bernard, it’s no use: you see how hard I am trying to tell the truth. How is it that everything I tell you rings so false?...” “Don’t talk so loud: the man in front of us turned round just now.”