‘You stupid!’ she said, ’take me round the waist, and say pretty things to me, since you are supposed to be in love with me.  Don’t you know how to make love then?’

But as soon as she felt him clasp her with eager impetuosity, she began to struggle, and freed herself from his embrace.

’No, no; leave me alone.  I can’t bear it.  I feel as though I were choking in this room.’

From that day forward they felt the same kind of fear for the room as they already felt for the garden.  Their one remaining harbour of refuge was now a place to be shunned and dreaded, a spot where they could no longer find themselves together without watching each other furtively.  Albine now scarcely ventured to enter it, but remained near the threshold, with the door wide open behind her so as to afford her an immediate retreat.  Serge lived there in solitude, a prey to sickening restlessness, half-stifling, lying on the couch and vainly trying to close his ears to the sighs of the soughing park and his nostrils to the haunting fragrance of the old furniture.  At night he dreamt wild passionate dreams, which left him in the morning nervous and disquieted.  He believed that he was falling ill again, that he would never recover plenitude of health.  For days and days he remained there in silence, with dark rings round his sleepy eyes, only starting into wakefulness when Albine came to visit him.  They would remain face to face, gazing at one another sadly, and uttering but a few soft words, which seemed to choke them.  Albine’s eyes were even darker than Serge’s, and were filled with an imploring gaze.

Then, after a week had gone by, Albine’s visit never lasted more than a few minutes.  She seemed to shun him.  When she came to the room, she appeared thoughtful, remained standing, and hurried off as soon as possible.  When he questioned her about this change in her demeanour towards him, and reproached her for no longer being friendly, she turned her head away and avoided replying.  He never could get her to tell him how she spent the mornings that she passed alone.  She would only shake her head, and talk about being very idle.  If he pressed her more closely, she bounded out of the room, just wishing him a hasty good-night as she disappeared through the doorway.  He often noticed, however, that she had been crying.  He observed, too, in her expression the phases of a hope that was never fulfilled, the perpetual struggling of a desire eager to be satisfied.  Sometimes she seemed quite overwhelmed with melancholy, dragging herself about with an air of utter discouragement, like one who no longer had any pleasure in living.  At other times she laughed lightly, her face shone with an expression of triumphant hope, of which, however, she would not yet speak, and her feet could not remain still, so eager was she to dart away to what seemed to her some last certainty.  But on the following day, she would sink again into desperation, to soar afresh on the morrow on the pinions of renewed hope.  One thing which she could not conceal from Serge was that she suffered from extreme lassitude.  Even during the few moments they spent together she could not prevent her head from nodding, or keep herself from dozing off.