And as Thérèse protested, she added:
“Oh, you’ve got the family spirit with a vengeance! You pose as emancipated, but since your marriage you’ve become a woman of the family, pretty quick.... Yes, yes, of course, you did it for the best: you betrayed me to save me, didn’t you? I will spare you your explanations.” As she was opening the door, Thérèse asked her where she was going.
“To Vilméja, to his house.”
“I tell you he left it two days ago.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She went out; Thérèse then lit the lantern hanging in the entrance hall and went out after her:
“You’re going wrong, my little Anne: you’re on the road to Biourge. Vilméja is over there.”
They made their way through the mist. Dogs began to bark. The oaks of Vilméja at last, and the house, not asleep, but dead. Anne prowled round the empty sepulchre, and hammered on the door with both fists. Thérèse, standing motionless, had put the lantern down on the grass. She watched her friend’s slender ghost clinging to each window on the ground floor. Anne was no doubt whispering a name to herself, but not calling it aloud, for she knew that it was quite useless. For a few moments she was hidden behind the building; then she reappeared, went up to the door, and sank down upon the threshold, and hid her face in her knees which she clasped with her arms. Thérèse lifted her up and led her away. Anne kept on saying, as she stumbled along: “I shall go to Paris to-morrow morning: Paris is not so very big: I shall find him in Paris....” But she spoke like an exhausted child who had already given up hope.
Bernard, awakened by the sound of their voices, had put on a dressing-gown and was waiting for them in the drawing-room. Thérèse was wrong to banish the memory of that scene that broke out between brother and sister. This man, who could seize a poor worn-out child so roughly by the wrists, drag her up to a room on the second floor, and bolt the door, is your husband, Thérèse: that Bernard, who, in two hours’ time, will be your judge. The spirit of the family inspired him, and not for one instant did he waver. He always knew, in every sort of situation, what was due to the family. You, in the agony of your remorse, Thérèse, are preparing a long appeal: but only men with no principles can listen to a reason that is not their own. Bernard will laugh at your arguments: “I know what I have to do.” He always knows what he has to do. If he sometimes hesitates, he says: “The family have discussed it and we have decided that....” How can you doubt that he has prepared his sentence: Your destiny is fixed for ever: you may as well go to sleep.