She did not reply; she was thinking of her long-past youth, and of many sad things that had occurred.  She had been married as girls are married; she hardly knew her betrothed, who was a diplomatist, and later, she lived the same life with him that all women of the world live with their husbands.  But Monsieur d’Apreval, who was also married, loved her with a profound passion, and while Monsieur de Cadour was absent in India, on a political mission for a long time, she succumbed.  Could she possibly have resisted, have refused to give herself?  Could she have had the strength and courage not to have yielded, as she loved him also?  No, certainly not; it would have been too hard; she would have suffered too much!  How cruel and deceitful life is!  Is it possible to avoid certain attacks of fate, or can one escape from one’s destiny?  When a solitary, abandoned woman, without children and with a careless husband, always escapes from the passion which a man feels for her, as she would escape from the sun, in order to live in darkness until she dies?

How well she recalled all the details, his kisses, his smiles, the way he used to stop, in order to watch her until she was indoors.  What happy days they were; the only really delicious days she had ever enjoyed; and how quickly they were over!

And then she discovered that she was pregnant!  What anguish!

Oh! that journey to the South, that long journey, her sufferings, her constant terror, that secluded life in the small, solitary house on the shores of the Mediterranean, at the bottom of a garden, which she did not venture to leave.  How well she remembered those long days which she spent lying under an orange tree, looking up at the round, red fruit, amidst the green leaves.  How she used to long to go out, as far as the sea, whose fresh breezes came to her over the wall, and whose small waves she could hear lapping on the beach.  She dreamt of its immense blue expanse sparkling under the sun, with the white sails of the small vessels, and a mountain on the horizon.  But she did not dare to go outside the gate; suppose anybody had recognized her, unshapely as she was, and showing her disgrace by her expanded waist!

And those days of waiting, those last days of misery and expectation!  The impending suffering and then, that terrible night!  What misery she had endured, and what a night it was!  How she had groaned and screamed!  She could still see the pale face of her lover, who kissed her hand every moment, and the clean-shaven face of the doctor, and the nurse’s white cap.

And what she felt when she heard the child’s feeble cries, that mewling, that first effort of a human voice!

And the next day! the next day! the only day of her life on which she had seen and kissed her son, for from that time, she had never even caught a glimpse of him.