Whether he acted in accordance with his temperament, little inclined to dissimulate no matter how serious a case might be, whether the evidence seemed to him glaring, or whether in his clear-sightedness he realised that I was responsible, he hurled his opinion in my face, without warning of any kind. “She is lost.” When one is accustomed only to conversations velvety with politeness even if they are savage at bottom, such brutal statements are disconcerting; one does not allow them or believe in them, one considers them declamatory. In society no one is flat-footed, with love or truth or death. One turns carefully aside from such lack of taste or tactless language as the doctor’s. Quite calmly I let him know my incredulity. “Come, come, then, what is her trouble?” I asked. “Her trouble? She hasn’t any.” “What is the matter then?” “If she had any, I should know how to treat her. I find nothing, and I can do nothing. She has reached the end of her forces, she is exhausted. Her heart and arteries do not perform their functions properly. They may stop at any moment. In any case, they will not act much longer. It is the same with her as with very old people sometimes; the oil is dry, the wick is burned out.” “At her age? You are joking, doctor.” “At her age, yes, it is surprising. I have met similar cases among the working people in the hospitals, from too early or badly cared-for maternity, or from too long uninterrupted manual labour and lack of hygiene.” “But none of those things can be the case with Mme. Cernay.” Before making his point definite, the doctor seemed to stop and meditate. “Moral suffering, continued unrest and complete lack of mental repose, can produce a similar result,” he ended by telling me. “The slow wasting away which one sometimes finds with unhappiness requires a highly wrought sensibility. But that realm is closed to my investigation.” And, stopping short, he wrote a prescription; he advised the quiet of the country, talked of the unexpected reserves of her youth, mitigated at a rather late hour the severity of his verdict, promised to return, and took his leave. As soon as he had gone, my spirit began to rebel against him. His inability to define Raymonde’s illness drove him to exaggerate it. He was falling back on those old-fashioned methods that attribute all our ills to internal rather than external causes. I sent a telegram after him, asking him to call in consultation a certain specialist whose name had been made famous by the enthusiasm of a social clientèle. It was important to reassure Raymonde absolutely, I thought. Before rejoining her, I considered some means to this end. We had been asked to Mme. de Saunois’ that very evening: I would go, so that she might not think I was hiding anything. Yet the hope of meeting Mme. de H-- there, was not that something hidden?