Such were Bernard’s thoughts. And he reflected, too, that all the neighbours, greedy to enjoy their shame, would be greatly disconcerted every Sunday by the sight of so harmonious a household! He was almost impatient for Sunday to come so that he might observe their expressions!... Moreover, justice would still be done. He took the lamp, and as he raised it, the light fell upon Thérèse’s averted head:

“Aren’t you going up yet?”

She did not seem to hear him: and he went out, leaving her in darkness. At the bottom of the staircase Aunt Clara sat crouching on the lowest step. As the old woman stared at him, he smiled with an effort, and took her arm to raise her. But she resisted,—like an old dog against the bed of its dying master. Bernard placed the lamp on the paved floor, and shouted in the old woman’s ear that Thérèse was already feeling much better, but that she wanted to be alone for a few minutes before she went to bed.

“It is just one of her moods, you know.”

Yes, the aunt knew: it was always her ill-luck to go into Thérèse’s room just at the moment when she wanted to be alone. Indeed, in the past, the old lady had often felt she was not wanted immediately she had opened the door. She got up with an effort and, leaning on Bernard’s arm, went up to her room, which was over the large drawing-room. Bernard went in after her, carefully lit a candle on the table, kissed her on the forehead, and then withdrew. The aunt never took her eyes off him. What did she read on the faces of men whose voices she could not hear? She left Bernard the time to get to his room, and opened her door again gently ... but he was still on the landing, leaning against the banisters, rolling a cigarette; she hurriedly went in again, her legs trembling and so breathless that she had not the strength to undress. She remained lying on her bed, with staring eyes.

CHAPTER X

In the drawing-room, Thérèse was sitting in the dark. There were still some embers alive under the ashes of the fire. She did not move. Now that it was too late, stray passages from the confession she had prepared during her journey, floated to the surface of her mind; but she could not find fault with herself for not having used it. As a matter of fact, the story was too well constructed, and had but little reference to reality. The importance she had chosen to attach to young Azévédo’s conversation was mere foolishness. As if that could have had the slightest effect! No, she had obeyed some inner inexorable law: she had failed to destroy this family, so she herself would be destroyed; they were right to consider her a monster, but she thought them monstrous, too. Without appearing to do so they now intended gradually and methodically to crush her out of existence. Henceforth, this powerful family machine would be used against her,—because she had not understood how to dislocate the mechanism, nor get out of reach of its ruthless wheels. It was useless to look for any reason other than the fact that they were what they were, and she was herself. “All those efforts,” she thought, “to wear a mask and a disguise, and impersonate a wife, which I could only keep up for less than two years, I imagine other women, no different from me, carry on until they die, saved, perhaps, by use and wont, drugged by habit, and stupefied into slumber against the maternal and all-powerful bosom of the Family. But I ... I ... I....”

She got up, opened the window, and felt the chill of dawn. Why not escape? She had only to get out of the window. Would they pursue her? Would they again deliver her up to justice? It was a risk worth taking. Anything was better than the interminable agony. Thérèse had already drawn up a chair against the window. But she had no money; thousands of pines were hers, but they were useless: she could not touch a penny except through Bernard. She could do nothing but take to the moors, as Daguerre had done, that hunted murderer for whom Thérèse as a child had felt so much pity. (She remembered the gendarmes whom Balionte had entertained in the kitchen at Argelouse)—and it was the Desqueyroux dog who had got on the poor wretch’s track. He had been picked up half-dead with hunger in the heather; and Thérèse had seen him lying bound in a haycart. He was said to have died on the ship before he reached Cayenne. A ship ... a convict settlement.... They were quite capable of giving her up, as they had said. That evidence that Bernard pretended he had,—it was a lie, no doubt; unless he had discovered that package of poisons in the pocket of the old cloak.

Thérèse decided to make certain. She felt her way to the staircase: as she went up it she saw more clearly, the light of dawn was shining through the windows above her. There, on the attic landing, was the cupboard where the old clothes were hanging,—the ones that never appeared, because they were only used during the shooting season. There was a deep pocket in that faded mantle: Aunt Clara used to put her knitting in it in the times when she also used to go out and watch for the pigeons to come over. Thérèse slipped her hand into it and drew out the packet sealed with wax: