g intervals
passed on the quay. That noise preoccupied, almost interested her. She
listened to the rumble, at first faint and distant, then louder, in
which she could distinguish the rolling of the wheels, the creaking
of the axles, the shock of horses' shoes, which, decreasing little by
little, ended in an imperceptible murmur.

And when silence returned, she fell again into her reverie.

He would understand that she loved him, that she had never loved any one
except him. It was unfortunate that the night was so long. She did not
dare to look at her watch for fear of seeing in it the immobility of
time.

She rose, went to the window, and drew the curtains. There was a pale
light in the clouded sky. She thought it might be the beginning of dawn.
She looked at her watch. It was half-past three.

She returned to the window. The sombre infinity outdoors attracted her.
She looked. The sidewalks shone under the gas-jets. A gentle rain was
falling. Suddenly a voice ascended in the silence; acute, and then
grave, it seemed to be made of several voices replying to one another.
It--was a drunkard disputing with the beings of his dream, to whom he
generously gave utterance, and whom he confounded afterward with great
gestures and in furious sentences. Therese could see the poor man
walk along the parapet in his white blouse, and she could hear words
recurring incessantly: "That is what I say to the government."

Chilled, she returned to her bed. She thought, "He is jealous, he is
madly jealous. It is a question of nerves and of blood. But his love,
too, is an affair of blood and of nerves. His love and his jealousy are
one and the same thing. Another would understand. It would be sufficient
to please his self-love." But he was jealous from the depth of his soul.
She knew this; she knew that in him jealousy was a physical torture, a
wound enlarged by imagination. She knew how profound the evil was. She
had seen him grow pale before the bronze St. Mark when she had thrown
the letter in the box on the wall of the old Florentine house at a time
when she was his only in dreams.

She recalled his smothered complaints, his sudden fits of sadness, and
the painful mystery of the words which he repeated frequently: "I can
forget you only when I am with you." She saw again the Dinard letter and
his furious despair at a word overheard at a wine-shop table. She felt
that the blow had been struck accidentally at the most sensitive point,