starry sky cut out by the chimneys and roofs. She only thought of
Laurent when awakened with a start by nightmare. Then, sitting up,
trembling, with dilated eyes, and pressing her nightdress to her, she
said to herself that she would not experience these sudden fears, if she
had a man lying beside her. She thought of her sweetheart as of a dog
who would have guarded and protected her.

Of a daytime, in the shop, she took an interest in what was going on
outside; she went out at her own instigation, and no longer lived
in sullen revolt, occupied with thoughts of hatred and vengeance. It
worried her to sit musing. She felt the necessity of acting and seeing.
From morning to night, she watched the people passing through the
arcade. The noise, and going and coming diverted her. She became
inquisitive and talkative, in a word a woman, for hitherto she had only
displayed the actions and ideas of a man.

From her point of observation, she remarked a young man, a student, who
lived at an hotel in the neighbourhood, and who passed several times
daily before the shop. This youth had a handsome, pale face, with the
long hair of a poet, and the moustache of an officer. Therese thought
him superior looking. She was in love with him for a week, in love like
a schoolgirl. She read novels, she compared the young man to Laurent,
and found the latter very coarse and heavy. Her reading revealed to her
romantic scenes that, hitherto, she had ignored. She had only loved with
blood and nerves, as yet, and she now began to love with her head. Then,
one day, the student disappeared. No doubt he had moved. In a few hours
Therese had forgotten him.

She now subscribed to a circulating library, and conceived a passion for
the heroes of all the stories that passed under her eyes. This sudden