om one's destiny? When a solitary,
abandoned woman, without children and with a careless husband, always
escapes from the passion which a man feels for her, as she would escape
from the sun, in order to live in darkness until she dies?

How well she recalled all the details, his kisses, his smiles, the way
he used to stop, in order to watch her until she was indoors. What happy
days they were; the only really delicious days she had ever enjoyed; and
how quickly they were over!

And then she discovered that she was pregnant! What anguish!

Oh! that journey to the South, that long journey, her sufferings, her
constant terror, that secluded life in the small, solitary house on the
shores of the Mediterranean, at the bottom of a garden, which she did
not venture to leave. How well she remembered those long days which she
spent lying under an orange tree, looking up at the round, red fruit,
amidst the green leaves. How she used to long to go out, as far as the
sea, whose fresh breezes came to her over the wall, and whose small
waves she could hear lapping on the beach. She dreamt of its immense
blue expanse sparkling under the sun, with the white sails of the small
vessels, and a mountain on the horizon. But she did not dare to go
outside the gate; suppose anybody had recognized her, unshapely as she
was, and showing her disgrace by her expanded waist!

And those days of waiting, those last days of misery and expectation!
The impending suffering and then, that terrible night! What misery she
had endured, and what a night it was! How she had groaned and screamed!
She could still see the pale face of her lover, who kissed her hand
every moment, and the clean-shaven face of the doctor, and the nurse's
white cap.

And what she felt when she heard the child's feeble cries, that mewling,
that first effort of a human voice!

And the next day! the next day! the only day of her life on which she
had seen and kissed her son, for from that time, she had never even
caught a glimpse of him.

And what a long, void existence hers had been since then, with the
thought of that child always, always floating before her. She had never
seen her son, that little creature that had been part of herself, even
once since then; they had taken him from her, carried him away and
hidden him. All she knew was, that he had been brought up by some
peasants in Normandy, that he had become a peasant himself, had married
well, and that his father, whos