rt. Enjoy yourself. My calls, my errands, your little
visits are nothing. Life is made up of just such trifles. Good-by!"

She went out. He would have liked to accompany her, but he made it a
point not to show himself with her in the street, unless she absolutely
forced him to do so.

In the street, Therese felt suddenly that she was alone in the world,
without joy and without pain. She returned to her house on foot, as was
her habit. It was night; the air was frozen, clear, and tranquil. But the
avenues through which she walked, in shadows studded with lights,
enveloped her with that mild atmosphere of the queen of cities, so
agreeable to its inhabitants, which makes itself felt even in the cold of
winter. She walked between the lines of huts and old houses, remains of
the field-days of Auteuil, which tall houses interrupted here and there.
These small shops, these monotonous windows, were nothing to her. Yet she
felt that she was under the mysterious spell of the friendship of
inanimate things; and it seemed to her that the stones, the doors of
houses, the lights behind the windowpanes, looked kindly upon her. She
was alone, and she wished to be alone. The steps she was taking between
the two houses wherein her habits were almost equal, the steps she had
taken so often, to-day seemed to her irrevocable. Why? What had that day
brought? Not exactly a quarrel. And yet the words spoken that day had
left a subtle, strange, persistent sting, which would never leave her.
What had happened? Nothing. And that nothing had effaced everything. She
had a sort of obscure certainty that she would never return to that room
which had so recently enclosed the most secret and dearest phases of her
life. She had loved Robert with the seriousness of a necessary joy. Made
to be loved, and very reasonable, she had not lost in the abandonment of
herself that instinct of reflection, that necessity for security, which
was so strong in her. She had not chosen: one seldom chooses. She had not
allowed herself to be taken at random and by surprise. She had done what
she had wished to do, as much as one ever does what one wishes to do in
such cases. She had nothing to regret. He had been to her what it was his
duty to be. She felt, in spite of everything, that all was at an end. She
thought, with dry sadness, that three years of her life had been given to
an honest man who had loved her and whom she had loved. "For I loved him.
I must have loved hi