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leave ... Unless ... Unless you want him to stay. Do you want him to stay? Tell me, you can tell me ... But we’ve only known each other for a few hours ... Do you want him to stay?
    He had got up from his place and come alongside her. She felt his breath on her back, very close. Abruptly, Nora stood up.
    â€œWait for me. I’ll be right back.”
    She went into the bathroom, avoiding turning on the light out of a fear of surprising in the mirror the crumpled face that came from sleeplessness and wine, a troubled expression that she had been familiar with for a long time now from her rare all-night parties. She turned on the faucet and let cold water run over her cheeks, her eyes. A moment later, she dared to turn on the light; incredulously, she rediscovered her composed, everyday gaze. She looked at herself for a while, wondering what she should do. It would be so easy to go back into the room, tell him that it was late and she was tired and ask him to leave! If only she’d had the courage to say the same thing, in a former time, on a night like this, to Grig ... That shaving kit would no longer be here – and a number of other things would be different than the way they were!
    She took off her dress with slow, sluggish movements, uncertain until the final moment whether or not she was going to complete the gesture. She stood naked, with her bare feet on the cement floor; the stoney coldness spread through her whole being with a soothing calm. Against the white faience glaze of the walls, brilliant beneath the heat of the lamps, her body looked pallid and sad. She stared at herself with a shake of her head. My poor Nora, how strange you are! A wave of tenderness, and the confusing taste of unshed tears, enveloped her at the thought of her strangeness.
    What was the use of resisting? She was going to walk out of here, she was going to turn out the lights, she was going to get into bed and wait for him to undress, she was going to kiss him first, on the lips, and she was going to find out everything about his bitter smile. Maybe he, too ... yes, he, too, probably had a few things he wanted to forget ...
    She put on the white bathrobe and looked at herself again in the mirror since she didn’t want to avoid her own gaze.

    She stopped on the threshold, unable to grasp what was happening. There was no one in the apartment. She stared fixedly at the empty armchair, the cigarette that burned abandoned in the ashtray, the overturned glasses. The door of the entrance hall was half open. She went through it, walked out into the corridor and listened incuriously for a moment. It seemed to her that from below, from the first floor, she heard steps going down.
    She returned to the apartment and looked again with a kind of stupid attention at each object, as she if she could have asked them questions, as if she could have expected them to reply.
    She opened the window. Below, in the street, on the opposite sidewalk, a gentleman in a grey overcoat was vanishing with long strides, his hands thrust in his pockets. Nora remembered the name she had read in the passport. She shouted without realizing what she was doing.
    â€œPaul! Paul!”
    Afterwards she stood at the open window, her arms limp at her sides.

II
    PAUL HEARD THE SHOUT, but didn’t turn his head. The voice fell from above, frozen and accentless. The whole street was stock-still with silence. It must be very late. In all of Bulevardul Dacia, a single lighted window: her window. He felt it in his back, between his shoulder blades, like a glare. He didn’t stop until he had turned the corner, when he felt that the eye of that light could no longer reach him.
    He suddenly felt unburdened. Free and on my own ...
    How far he was from the apartment he had fled! He had drunk a lot, he had talked endlessly, wishing keenly to be young and merry, but it had taken no more than being left alone for a few moments for all of his animation to collapse. He