Chapter 19, The Sofa Summary

Company is arriving. Thérèse and Léonie enter the white salon where Antoinette sits, surrounded by the wives of professionals from the village. The ladies are discussing the diagnosis of breast cancer that Antoinette has just received. The two girls leave the salon and go outside to play. Léonie suggests they go to the cellar. Once there, Thérèse pretends to sleepwalk. She disappears behind a barrel, and then both girls fall into a lit area at the bottom of the stairs. Thérèse has found a faded red velvet shoe, the same one that Antoinette is wearing in her photograph. The girls return upstairs, but the guests have gone. Madeleine, Antoinette, and Louis are sitting quietly in the salon and do not notice the girls'...