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moving.
    What was Pierre thinking? Was he remembering his mistresses, women he hadn’t loved but in whom he had aroused the almost mortal pleasure of sensuality? Or was he thinking of the injustice that made of this woman who loved him, and for whom he’d have given his life, a body incapable of the passion he desired so savagely, so religiously.
    Séverine herself felt only a dull misery. Despite her awareness of total power over Pierre, she had failed to pry open any further a soul that belonged to her. Without wanting to, that soul had refused itself to her, as her own body had refused itself to him. The silence between them was thick with their defeat.
    Fortunately, they had a passionate affection for each other that soothed everything. Their essential love was in no way hurt. On the contrary, they felt all the more a need to draw close to each other, to affirm what they knew to be indestructible. Unconsciously, Séverine slipped her hand into her husband’s. He gave it a firm squeeze, innocent of any sensuality, the grasp of some traveling companion, of some life companion. Shereplied in kind. They felt that their love was above meaningless disharmony.
    Sensuality, they seemed to agree, is a passing flame. We share a rarer, surer wealth.
    Daylight had now come to dispel the subtle and mysterious struggles of the instincts, those creatures of the dark. Pierre and Séverine looked at each other and smiled. This first light, implacable to all things forced to fade, was kind to their young faces. They emerged from the night, filled with freshness.
    “It’s still early,” Séverine said. “You’ve got time before you have to go to the hospital. Come to the Bois with me.”
    “It won’t tire you?”
    “No, that’s all over now. I’m not sick any more. Hurry up and dress.”
    When Pierre had left the room she suddenly realized she’d never told him about Husson.
    Well, I won’t, she decided. Why should I give him any unnecessary anxiety?
    For the first time in her life she thought it best to conceal something from Pierre; and somehow, she loved him all the more for it.

IV
    Séverine felt as though she’d been exorcised. She was finally free of that unknown woman who had seemed part of her on the brink of death, and who had been slowly destroying, by a succession of strange, corrupt fantasies, her pure self—the only self she accepted. She was quit of that woman for ever, she felt sure. Born of sickness, this creature of the shades had collapsed now that Séverine was strong again, now that her mind once more grasped the normal relationships of the rational world.
    She resumed her former place in this world with assurance. Food, sleep, affection and straightforward pleasuresput themselves at her disposal as before, and in a way that restored her equilibrium. A refreshed interest in the details of everyday life stimulated her vitality. She went from one room to another as if on a voyage of discovery. Furniture, objects, seemed to demonstrate their deep functional cohesion. Once again she was in charge of them, as she was of her maids, her own feelings, her life.
    These inner feelings, this more intense vigor, showed on her face only as the most subtle glow. Never had Pierre found his wife more seductive. And never had Séverine evinced such effective tenderness towards him; for all that remained in her consciousness of the imperfect crisis following her sickness was a resolve to work harder for her husband’s happiness. Her too-direct approach had failed, but this frustration by no means weakened her desire. Her wish to please him could be heard in the inflections of her voice, could be felt in a constant gentleness which both moved and disturbed Pierre. Such solicitude unbalanced the axis on which his life had till then swung.
    Two aspects of his wife’s behavior, however, remained the same as before, and so lessened his apprehension over her new attitude: Séverine still showed the same almost savage modesty,