These trifling events disappeared like scenes of a comedy on which the
curtain falls.

I passed the whole afternoon disheartened. I felt as if I were alone
against them all, while roaming about inside this house and yet outside
of it.

As I passed through the hallway, a door went shut hastily, cutting off
the laugh of a woman taken by surprise. A senseless noise oozed from
the walls, worse than silence. From under each door a broken ray of
light crept out, worse than darkness.

I went downstairs to the parlour, attracted by the sound of
conversation.

A group of men were talking, I no longer remember about what. They
went out, and I was alone. I heard them talking in the hall. Then
their voices died away.

A fashionable lady came in, with a rustle of silk and the smell of
flowers and perfume. She took up a lot of room because of her
fragrance and elegance. She carried her head held slightly forward and
had a beautiful long face set off by an expression of great sweetness.
But I could not see her well, because she did not look at me. She
seated herself, picked up a book, and turned the pages, and the leaves
cast upon her face a reflection of whiteness and thoughtfulness.

I watched her bosom rising and falling, and her motionless face, and
the living book that was merged with her. Her complexion was so
brilliant that her mouth seemed almost dark. Her beauty saddened me.
I looked at this unknown woman with sublime regret. She caressed me by
her presence. A woman always caresses a man when she comes near him
and they are alone. In spite of all sorts of separation, there is
always an awful beginning of happiness between them.

But she went out. That was the end of her. Nothing had happened, and
now it was over. All this was too simple, too hard, too true.

A gentle despair that I had never experienced before troubled me.
Since the previous day I had changed. Human life, its living truth, I
knew it as we all know it. I had been familiar with it all my life. I
believed in it with a kind of fear now that it had appeared to me in a
divine form.

CHAPTER IV

I went for several days without seeing anything. Those days were
frightfully warm. At first the sky was grey and rainy. Now September
was flaming to a close. Friday! Why, I had been in that house a week
already.

One sultry morning I sat in my room and sank into dreamy musings and
thought of a fairy tale.

The edge of a fore