I

Sophia lay awake one night in the room lately quitted by Carlier.  That silent negation of individuality had come and gone, and left scarcely any record of himself either in his room or in the memories of those who had surrounded his existence in the house.  Sophia had decided to descend from the sixth floor, partly because the temptation of a large room, after months in a cubicle, was rather strong; but more because of late she had been obliged to barricade the door of the cubicle with a chest of drawers, owing to the propensities of a new tenant of the sixth floor.  It was useless to complain to the concierge; the sole effective argument was the chest of drawers, and even that was frailer than Sophia could have wished.  Hence, finally, her retreat.

She heard the front-door of the flat open; then it was shut with nervous violence.  The resonance of its closing would have certainly wakened less accomplished sleepers than M. Niepce and his friend, whose snores continued with undisturbed regularity.  After a pause of shuffling, a match was struck, and feet crept across the corridor with the most exaggerated precautions against noise.  There followed the unintentional bang of another door.  It was decidedly the entry of a man without the slightest natural aptitude for furtive irruptions.  The clock in M. Niepce’s room, which the grocer had persuaded to exact time-keeping, chimed three with its delicate ting.

For several days past Chirac had been mysteriously engaged very late at the bureaux of the Debats.  No one knew the nature of his employment; he said nothing, except to inform Sophia that he would continue to come home about three o’clock until further notice.  She had insisted on leaving in his room the materials and apparatus for a light meal.  Naturally he had protested, with the irrational obstinacy of a physically weak man who sticks to it that he can defy the laws of nature.  But he had protested in vain.

His general conduct since Christmas Day had frightened Sophia, in spite of her tendency to stifle facile alarms at their birth.  He had eaten scarcely anything at all, and he went about with the face of a man dying of a broken heart.  The change in him was indeed tragic.  And instead of improving, he grew worse.  “Have I done this?” Sophia asked herself.  “It is impossible that I should have done this!  It is absurd and ridiculous that he should behave so!” Her thoughts were employed alternately in sympathizing with him and in despising him, in blaming herself and in blaming him.  When they spoke, they spoke awkwardly, as though one or both of them had committed a shameful crime, which could not even be mentioned.  The atmosphere of the flat was tainted by the horror.  And Sophia could not offer him a bowl of soup without wondering how he would look at her or avoid looking, and without carefully arranging in advance her own gestures and speech.  Existence was a nightmare of self-consciousness.