I was prudent; and it has happened that an idiot suddenly, brutally, at a
restaurant table, has opened my eyes and forced me to know. Oh, now that
I know, now that I can not doubt, it seems to me that to doubt would be
delicious! He gave the name--the name which I heard at Fiesole from Miss
Bell, and he added: 'Everybody knows about that.'

"So you loved him. You love him still! He is near you, doubtless.
He goes every year to the Dinard races. I have been told so. I see him.
I see everything. If you knew the images that worry me, you would say,
'He is mad,' and you would take pity on me. Oh, how I should like to
forget you and everything! But I can not. You know very well I can not
forget you except with you. I see you incessantly with him. It is
torture. I thought I was unfortunate that night on the banks of the
Arno. But I did not know then what it is to suffer. To-day I know."

As she finished reading that letter, Therese thought: "A word thrown
haphazard has placed him in that condition, a word has made him
despairing and mad." She tried to think who might be the wretched fellow
who could have talked in that way. She suspected two or three young men
whom Le Menil had introduced to her once, warning her not to trust them.
And with one of the white and cold fits of anger she had inherited from
her father she said to herself: "I must know who he is." In the
meanwhile what was she to do? Her lover in despair, mad, ill, she could
not run to him, embrace him, and throw herself on him with such an
abandonment that he would feel how entirely she was his, and be forced to
believe in her. Should she write? How much better it would be to go to
him, to fall upon his heart and say to him: "Dare to believe I am not
yours only!" But she could only write. She had hardly begun her letter
when she heard voices and laughter in the garden. Therese went down,
tranquil and smiling; her large straw hat threw on her face a transparent