An open gas flame whistled in the narrow anteroom. The neglected doors were shabby and the dark rooms only remembered people who had not cared for them and were for ever moving on.
The first week passed by. Anne did not leave Thomas’s bedside and still dreaded going to the window. All this time her soul lead a double life: one for Thomas, one for the house.
After a sleepless night she could stand it no longer. She stole gently to the window and bent hesitatingly, fearfully, forward.
She felt relieved. In the grey morning the old house still stood intact.... She noticed for the first time that its yellow walls stood further out than the other houses and that they obstructed the road. She was shocked to realize how old and big it was. Its steep, old-fashioned roof cast a deep shadow out of which the windows stared at her with the pitiful gaze of the blind.
While she looked at them one by one, she never ceased listening to her patient. Suddenly it seemed to her that Thomas’s breath had become weaker. She glided back trembling. Henceforth this became Anne’s only road. It was a short road but it embraced Anne’s whole life.
One morning a queer noise roused her from the sleep of exhaustion. There was silence in the room, the noise came from the street. She rose from the armchair in which she spent the nights and went on tiptoe to the window.
Workmen stood in front of the old house. Some men rolled tarred poles from a cart. The front door was open as if gaping for an awful shriek of agony. A gap had formed between the tiles of the attics and men walked upon the roof.
Anne covered her eyes. Had she to live through this? She could not run away. She would have to see it all....
Thomas started up from a restless dream.
“What is it? What is happening?”