“Is he so unlike the others?”
“I should like to describe him ... but he is so much beyond anything I could say.... After all, you might think him quite ordinary.... But I’m sure you wouldn’t.”
She could no longer see any individual traits in the youth whose image glowed with all the love she bore him. “Passion,” thought Thérèse, “would make me more clear-sighted: nothing would escape me in the human being I wanted for my own.”
“Thérèse, if I gave in about this trip, you would see him, wouldn’t you, and tell me exactly what he said? And you would take my letters to him? If I go away, if I can bear to go away....” Thérèse left the kingdom of light and fire and penetrated once more, like some ill-omened wasp, into the study where the parents waited until the heat had passed, and their daughter’s resistance had broken down. It was not until after many such comings and goings that Anne finally consented to go away. And Thérèse would no doubt never have succeeded had it not been for the imminent return of the Deguilhems. The girl trembled at this further danger. Thérèse said to her more than once that, “for a rich young man, Deguilhem wasn’t at all bad.”
“But, Thérèse, I’ve hardly looked at him: he wears glasses, he’s bald,—why, he’s an old man.”
“He’s twenty-nine.”
“Exactly what I said, he’s an old man,—and besides, old or not....”
At dinner in the evening, the La Traves were talking about Biarritz, and began to consider the question of hotels. Thérèse watched Anne, a body without movement and without soul. “Make an effort”; Madame de la Trave kept on saying: “you can if you try.” Anne raised the spoon to her lips with a mechanical gesture. There was no light in her eyes. Nothing and nobody had any existence for her except the one who was not there. Sometimes a smile wandered over her lips at the recollection of a word or caress of Jean Azévédo at the time when they used to sit in that hut with its walls of heather, and those strong fingers, stronger than he knew, tore her blouse a little....
Thérèse looked at Bernard’s head and shoulders bent over his plate: as he was sitting with his back to the light she could not see his face; but she heard him slowly masticating, ruminating that sacred substance, his food. She left the table. Her mother-in-law said: “She would sooner we did not take any notice of her: I should like to make a fuss of her, but she does not care to be looked after. These feelings of sickness are the least she can expect in her condition. But she may say what she likes; she does smoke too much.” And the good lady recalled her own memories of pregnancy. “I remember when I was expecting you, I had to sniff an india-rubber ball: it was the only thing that would settle my stomach.”