Then he would be filled with rage. He needed to stretch his bulky limbs, to impose on her the sight of his pitted face burning with fever. Then he would spend weeks at the window, wearing her out with the sight of him. Twice, he even blew her ardent kisses, with all the brutality of shy people when they are driven mad by daring.

Thérèse didn’t even lose her temper. When he was hidden, he could see her coming and going with her royal demeanour, and when he forced her to see him, she maintained the same attitude, only even more haughty and frigid. He never caught her losing her self-control. If her eyes happened to encounter him, she made no haste to look away. When he heard people in the post office say that Mlle de Marsanne was deeply pious and charitable, he would sometimes protest violently to himself. No, no! she was completely irreligious, she loved blood for she had blood on her lips, and the pallor of her face came from her contempt for the world. Then he would weep for having insulted her, and beg her for forgiveness, as if she were a saint enfolded in the purity of her wings.

Throughout this first year, day followed on after day without bringing any change. When summer returned, he experienced a peculiar sensation: Thérèse seemed to him to be walking in another atmosphere. There were the same little events as before, the shutters were pushed open each morning and closed again in the evening, there were the regular appearances at the usual hours; but a new spirit emanated from her room. Thérèse was paler, taller. One feverish day he took the risk of blowing her a third kiss from his fevered fingertips. She looked at him fixedly, her gravity disconcerting, without leaving the window. He was the one to withdraw, his face flushed.

There was only one new development, towards the end of the summer – one that shook him to the depths of his being, even though it was the simplest little thing imaginable. Almost every day, at dusk, Thérèse’s casement, which had been left half-open, would be violently slammed shut, making the wooden panels and the window catch clatter. This bang would make Julien jump in painful trepidation; and he was left tormented with anxiety, his heart bruised, without being able to say why. After this abrupt detonation, the house relapsed into such a deathly quiet that the silence made him afraid. For a long time, he was unable to make out whose arm it was slamming the window shut like that; but, one evening, he caught sight of Thérèse’s pale hands; she it was twisting the window catch to with such impatient fury. And when, an hour later, she reopened the window, but slowly this time, with a dignified deliberation, she seemed weary, leaning for a moment on the window sill; then she would walk up and down in her immaculate room, attending to girlish little occupations. Julien was left standing vacantly, and the continual scrape of the window catch echoed in his ears.

One grey, mild autumn evening, the catch gave a terrible squeal. Julien shuddered, and involuntary tears fell from his eyes, as he looked over at the gloomy house immersed in the shadows of twilight. It had rained that morning, the half-bare chestnut trees were giving off an odour of death.

But Julien continued to wait for the window to reopen. And suddenly it did reopen, just as violently as it had closed. Thérèse appeared. She was completely white, her eyes wide open, her hair hanging loose round her neck. She stood there at the window, she put her ten fingers to her red lips, and blew Julien a kiss.

Distraught, he pressed his fists to his chest, as if to ask whether this kiss was meant for him.

Then Thérèse thought he was withdrawing. She leaned out further, again set her ten fingers to her red lips, and blew him a second kiss, and then a third. It was as if she were returning the young man’s three kisses.