I helped her do her homework; I lent her books; I organised picnics, little outings for her, her alone. She never suspected . . ."

"Of course I did," said Helene, and beneath her grey hair she gave a girlish smile and her eyes lit up with a mischievous gleam.

"I went away to Paris to finish my studies. You don't ask for the hand of a thirteen-year-old girl in marriage; I went off thinking I'd come back in five years and would then ask to marry her. But at seventeen she married someone else. Her husband was a very good man, much older than her. She would have married just about anyone to get away from her stepmother."

"Towards the end she was so mean," said Helene, "that my half-sister and I only had one pair of gloves. In theory we were meant to take turns wearing them when we went out to see people. But my stepmother managed to punish me for something every time we were supposed to go somewhere, so it was her own daughter who always wore the gloves. They were beautiful kid gloves. They made me so envious I decided I would say yes to the first man who asked to marry me, even if he didn't love me, just to have a pair of my own, my very own. The young are so foolish ..."

"I was very upset," said Francois, "and when I came home and saw the lovely, rather sad young woman my friend had become, I fell very much in love . . . As for her . . ." He fell silent.

"Oh, see how they're blushing," cried Colette, clapping her hands, looking back and forth between her mother and father. "Come on, now, tell all! That's when your love story started, isn't it? You spoke to each other, you had an understanding. He went away again, with a heavy heart, because you weren't free. He waited faithfully and when you were widowed, he came back and married you. You lived happily ever after and had many children."

"Yes, that's right," said Helene, "but, my God, before that, what anxiety, what tears! Everything seemed impossible to put right. But how long ago all that was ... When my first husband died, your father was away, travelling. I thought he'd forgotten all about me, that he was never coming back. When you're young, you're so impatient. Every day that passes, every day without your love rips you apart. Finally, he came back."

It was pitch black outside now. I got up and closed the heavy wooden shutters; their mournful creak broke the silence and made everyone jump. Helene said it was time for them to go.