When Bernard came back he had remarked how serious she looked, like some one who has been thinking something over, and decided what to do. But she ought not to smoke so much, he said: she was poisoning herself. Thérèse said that too much importance should not be attached to a young girl’s fancies. She promised to bring her to a right view of things. Bernard wanted Thérèse to reassure him,—full of the joy of feeling the return tickets in his pockets; and more especially gratified that his family had already asked for his wife’s help. He announced that, cost what it might, for the last luncheon on their trip they would go to some restaurant in the Bois. In the taxi he talked about his plans for the shooting season; he was in a hurry to try the dog that Balion was breaking in for him. His mother wrote that since the mare had been fired she did not limp any more.
There were not yet many people in the restaurant, where the innumerable waiters made them nervous. Thérèse still remembered the smell—a blend of geraniums and vinegar. Bernard had never tasted Hock (“Good Lord, they don’t give it away: still, Christmas only comes once a year!”). Bernard’s broad shoulders prevented Thérèse seeing much of the room. Behind the great plate-glass windows, motor-cars slid up and stopped, more silently than in a film. She watched what she knew to be the temporal muscles moving behind Bernard’s ears. After the first few glasses he got flushed: for some weeks now this handsome cavalier from the country had had no means of working off his daily ration of food and drink. She did not hate him but how she longed to be alone to think about her pain and find exactly where it lay. She simply wished he was somewhere else, so that she might no longer have to force herself to eat and smile, compose her face, and veil the fire that must be blazing in her eyes: so that her mind might dwell freely on her mysterious despair.... Some one has escaped from the desert island where you thought to have her with you till the end; she crosses the abyss that divides you from the world and is gone;—to another planet, ... and yet: No.... Who has ever been able to do that? Anne was always one of those who were content with life as it came: it was a changeling whose sleeping head Thérèse had watched lying on her lap, in their solitary holidays together: she had never known the real Anne de la Trave, the one who was now meeting Jean Azévédo in the deserted shooting-hut between Saint Clair and Argelouse.
“What is the matter? You aren’t eating. You mustn’t leave anything: it would be a shame considering the price it costs. Is it the heat? You aren’t going to faint, I hope. Or perhaps you’re feeling sick ... already?”
She smiled ... with her lips only. She said she was thinking about Anne’s adventure (she had to talk about Anne). And as Bernard said he was not bothering himself any longer now that she had the matter in hand, his wife asked him why his parents were opposed to the marriage. He thought she was laughing at him, and begged her not to begin her paradoxes.
“In the first place, you know very well they are Jews: Mother knew his grandfather, the one who refused to be baptised.”
But Thérèse pretended that these Portuguese-Jewish names were the oldest in Bordeaux:
“The Azévédos were great people when our ancestors were miserable shepherds, shivering with fever by their marshes.”
“Look here, Thérèse: don’t argue for the pleasure of arguing: all Jews are the same ... and besides they’re a degenerate family—consumptive to the marrow, everybody knows it.”
She lit a cigarette with a gesture that had always offended Bernard: