"La Villaumer insists," said Simone, "that in her case it is simply a lack of imagination, and that no one should blame her. He says, you understand, that she is unable to bring before herself, as you do, for example, a vision of her husband. If she had been capable of bearing about with her a persistent picture of him, she would have been faithful, if it were only to a picture; but she has no imagination; it is necessary to her that her mind should rest upon an object. It is one explanation--probably a paradox." At that moment they heard in the neighboring apartment the playing of an excellent pianist which had formerly lulled the reveries of Odette when she was waiting for Jean. That neighboring apartment, into which the Jacquelins had never set foot, was separated from theirs only by a thin partition and a door. The music had often fretted Jean, but when Odette was alone she had loved to hear it. "Listen!" said Odette. "Oh, it is more than eighteen months since I have heard music!" "That is so," said Simone; "in Paris one finds a little of everything that one used to love; it is that that hurts." "What is she playing?" asked Simone after a moment. It was a revery; two lovers who are seeking one another, groping in the darkness of a garden on a lovely summer night; you hear their hesitating footsteps, you suspect their vexed and feverish gestures, their eager lips that call one another without imprudently pronouncing a name; though their footsteps creak upon the gravel and a fountain drops its slow pearls into the basin. Suddenly the music of a waltz attracts them separately to the lighted house, and they exchange kisses on the steps of the entrance, before being swallowed up in the intoxicating motion. "Oh!" exclaimed Odette, thrilled, "do you remember, do you remember?" "What?" asked Simone. "Why, everything! Everything that happened _before_, before this end of the world that never ends!" Odette, overcome by the harmonious reminder of the waltz of a possible festival, of the joy of living, of being pretty, young, beloved, could only repeat: "I haven't heard ... anything ... for more than eighteen months, Simone! Do you remember that evening at Mme. Sormellier's, at Bellevue, where both our husbands were so beautiful?" "And we, too, Odette! We shall be old after the war. We shall have had hardly five or six years of youth. I will confess to you that sometimes I juggle with fate. I go to see Clotilde, who refuses to permit herself to be touched by events. She says: 'I can do nothing about it; I am good for nothing. Let the world let me alone as I let it alone! Till my last hour I will stay with my flowers, my books, and my music.'" "Ah! Clotilde, yes; do you know, I had forgotten her!" "Everybody is forgetting her, and she forgets everybody. Her husband is at Great Headquarters; he often comes. She is a privileged person, and she says: 'Why should I not accept all the good that is offered me?'"