All Bernard wanted now was to get away: but he knew the fantastic creature too well: hair-splitting was a favourite occupation of hers. Thérèse, too, realised that her companion, who for one brief second had come near to her, had again receded into the infinite distance. But she persisted, called in the aid of her lovely smile, and spoke with certain low and husky intonations he had always liked. “But now, Bernard, I feel clearly that the Thérèse who stamps out her cigarette because a spark will set the undergrowth on fire, the Thérèse who liked to count the pines, and look after her resin:--the Thérèse who was proud to marry a Desqueyroux, to hold a place in one of the best families of the district, glad at last to settle down, as the phrase goes;--that Thérèse is as real as the other, and as alive: No, there was no need to sacrifice her to the other.” “What other?” She did not know what to answer, and he looked at his watch. “I must come back sometimes, I suppose, on business ... and to see Marie,” she said. “What business? I look after the Family property. You will have your place at all the official ceremonies at which, for the honour of the Family and in Marie’s interests, we must be seen together. In as large a Family as ours there are often weddings, I am glad to say, and funerals as well. I shall be surprised, for instance, if Uncle Martin lasts until the autumn: that will be an opportunity, since you seem to be getting tired of your independence already.” * * * * * A policeman on horseback came up with a whistle at his lips, opened an invisible sluice, and an army of pedestrians hurried across the dark roadway before the wave of taxis submerged them once more. “I ought to have gone out one night,” she thought, “on to the great moors of the South, like Daguerre: I ought to have walked through the stunted pines of that evil land,--walked until I was exhausted. I should not have had the courage to keep my head under water in one of the pools, as that Argelouse shepherd did last year, because his daughter-in-law starved him. But I could have lain down in the sand and shut my eyes.... It is true the crows and ants don’t wait until....” She watched the stream of humanity, that living mass, in which her body would so soon be plunged and borne helpless away. She could do nothing now. Bernard pulled out his watch again. “A quarter to eleven: just time to call at the hotel....” “You won’t be very warm travelling.” “No, and I shall have to cover myself up this evening in the car.”