She stood before him and in an altered, hoarse, angry voice exclaimed: 

“Well, it isn’t for the fun of it, anyhow!”

He insisted in a gentle voice:  “Then what makes you?”

She grumbled:  “I’ve got to live!  Foolish question!” And she walked away, humming.

Monsieur Leras stood there bewildered.  Other women were passing near him, speaking to him and calling to him.  He felt as though he were enveloped in darkness by something disagreeable.

He sat down again on a bench.  The carriages were still rolling by.  He thought:  “I should have done better not to come here; I feel all upset.”  He began to think of all this venal or passionate love, of all these kisses, sold or given, which were passing by it front of him.  Love!  He scarcely knew it.  In his lifetime he had only known two or three women, his means forcing him to live a quiet life, and he looked back at the life which he had led, so different from everybody else, so dreary, so mournful, so empty.

Some people are really unfortunate.  And suddenly, as though a veil had been torn from his eyes, he perceived the infinite misery, the monotony of his existence:  the past, present and future misery; his last day similar to his first one, with nothing before him, behind him or about him, nothing in his heart or any place.

The stream of carriages was still going by.  In the rapid passage of the open carriage he still saw the two silent, loving creatures.  It seemed to him that the whole of humanity was flowing on before him, intoxicated with joy, pleasure and happiness.  He alone was looking on.  To-morrow he would again be alone, always alone, more so than any one else.  He stood up, took a few steps, and suddenly he felt as tired as though he had taken a long journey on foot, and he sat down on the next bench.

What was he waiting for?  What was he hoping for?  Nothing.  He was thinking of how pleasant it must be in old age to return home and find the little children.  It is pleasant to grow old when one is surrounded by those beings who owe their life to you, who love you, who caress you, who tell you charming and foolish little things which warm your heart and console you for everything.

And, thinking of his empty room, clean and sad, where no one but himself ever entered, a feeling of distress filled his soul; and the place seemed to him more mournful even than his little office.  Nobody ever came there; no one ever spoke in it.  It was dead, silent, without the echo of a human voice.  It seems as though walls retain something of the people who live within them, something of their manner, face and voice.  The very houses inhabited by happy families are gayer than the dwellings of the unhappy.  His room was as barren of memories as his life.  And the thought of returning to this place, all alone, of getting into his bed, of again repeating all the duties and actions of every evening, this thought terrified him.  As though to escape farther from this sinister home, and from the time when he would have to return to it, he arose and walked along a path to a wooded corner, where he sat down on the grass.