She saw strange faces, old women carrying shopping bags, their hands still trembling from having handled gold. This wasn’t the first casino she’d ever seen; one of her earliest memories was having walked across the gambling rooms in Ostend, where players ignored the pieces of gold that sometimes rolled beneath their feet. But now she understood how to see beyond the superficial world. She looked at the women plastered in make-up and thought, ‘Do they have children? Were they ever young? Are they happy?’

For there comes a time in life when the pity previously reserved only for other children takes on a different form, a time when we study the faces of ‘old people’ and sense that one day we will be just like them. And that is the moment when early childhood comes to an end.

Outside, it was getting dark; the sky was a beautiful velvet colour with luminous fountains, sweet smells, magnolias in blossom, a soft, caressing wind. Hélène looked out of the window, pressing her face against the glass panes; it was a night that seemed too intense, too sensual. ‘Not for children,’ she thought with a smile. She felt small, lost, guilty. (Why? I won’t get caught. It’s not my fault. I was with Papa. He wasn’t with me for long, though …) It was eight o’clock in the evening. Some cars stopped in front of the Café de Paris; men in tuxedos got out, women in ball gowns. Beneath a balcony she could hear the sound of mandolins, kisses, muffled laughter. On the roads near the harbour dim lights cast shadows along the streets and all the cranes from the coastline converged, making their way towards the casino.

It was nine o’clock now … ‘I’m hungry,’ thought Hélène. ‘What can I do? I just have to stay here; they won’t let me into the gaming rooms.’ How many people like her were waiting reluctantly? The entrance hall was full of anxious, tired women who waited patiently, without complaining. She felt strangely old and resigned, resigned to spend the night right there on the bench if she had to. If only her eyes wouldn’t keep closing beneath her heavy eyelids. Time was passing so slowly … yet the hands of the clock on the Casino wall moved strangely quickly. It was nine-thirty just a little while ago, the time when she normally went to bed. But now the hands of the clock had moved forward, nine-forty-five, ten o’clock … To stop herself from falling asleep, she began pacing back and forth. A woman was coming and going in the darkness, waving a pink feather boa. Hélène looked at her. She felt that her mind was clearer because she was hungry; it mysteriously allowed her to see deep into the life of this nameless woman to such an extent that she could feel the woman’s weariness and anxiety within her own soul. She was so hungry … She breathed in the smell of soup that was being brought upstairs in a tureen from the kitchens of the Café de Paris.

‘I feel like a suitcase forgotten at the left luggage office,’ she thought, trying to make fun of herself.

Obviously this was all so comical, so very comical … She looked around her. There were no other children: they were all asleep in bed. A caring hand had closed the windows and curtains. They couldn’t hear the mumblings of the old man accosting the shop girls; they couldn’t see the couples kissing on park benches.

‘Mademoiselle Rose wouldn’t have forgotten all about me, not Mademoiselle Rose. It’s obvious that I’m still deluding myself,’ she thought bitterly. ‘She’s the only one in the world who loves me …’

Eleven o’clock.