Her mind, already disturbed, had then become so totally withdrawn that she was hardly conscious of her surroundings and had to be tended, with great gentleness, as if she were a backward child.

Afterwards there had been the trip to Vienna to consult nerve specialists and also to visit the sanatorium where her mother had been for some time. And when they had returned at last to her father’s home at Mezo-Varjas Adrienne had found that it was she who had to take charge of everything, for her father, though full of goodwill, was capable of little more than shouting at the servants and creating confusion wherever he went. The responsibilities had helped Adrienne to get through the first five weeks after Balint had had to leave her.

All this time Adrienne had lived only for other people and it had seemed to her that her own life did not exist, that she had become a mere abstraction, a will, whose only function was to keep her family from breaking up.

With these burdens upon her shoulders Adrienne had spent almost all her time at her father’s house where she had found herself obliged to manage everything. It was to her that the estate manager came for all decisions, discreetly and without letting Count Miloth see that he was doing so; and it was Adrienne who had seen to it that the heavy cost of her mother’s stay in the Austrian sanatorium was paid promptly and in full.

As for Judith, it had been obvious that she could no longer continue to share a room with her younger sister, Margit. Accordingly Adrienne had decided she would be better off isolated at the far end of one of the wings of the old one-storey manor-house where she would not be disturbed by the noise of her father shouting at the servants.

Adrienne had chosen two unused rooms, furnished them, and installed Judith in one while in the other she placed a kindly old serving woman who had lived at Varjas all her life and who had known Judith since she had been a child.

One day Adrienne had noticed that the sight of some small domestic animals had awakened some sign of interest in Judith’s muddled brain and she had, accordingly, arranged for her a little domestic poultry yard at the corner of the house with a few hens and some rabbits. This had been a great success. Judith had seemed overjoyed when she was first shown this new toy and ever since she had spent much of her time here, feeding and tending her new pets.

All this at last made Adrienne more independent of the authority of her mother-in-law and of her husband. This was a duty, and before such a duty her husband and his mother had had to yield. Furthermore it had provided a wonderful excuse to escape frequently from her husband’s house, Almasko, where Adrienne had had nothing to do and where it was as if she were a guest in her own home. There it was the old countess who ran the household and supervised the upbringing of Adrienne’s little daughter – and in both she brooked no interference from Adrienne. For the rest, Pal Uzdy did everything, himself attending to the smallest details of the running of the estate and the forests. Adrienne had tried to interest herself in the gardens and orchards but it had soon become obvious that the others despised her for it, tolerating such activity with condescending smiles as if it were a mere pastime, the futile and meaningless games of a child.

But now everything was different, for Adrienne’s family responsibilities were real. Until now Pal Uzdy had always treated his wife as if she were some sort of bought slave who had no other function in his house but to look beautiful, act obediently, and be there whenever he desired her. Now it was as if some new recognition had dawned in Uzdy, as if, however dimly, he had become aware that she might just be human – and it even appeared, in some strange way, as if he took pride in her being of use to her family.

This, however, was only upon the surface, for their marital relations remained the same as before. Adrienne still felt only fear and disgust when Uzdy came to her bedroom, and, with the blissful memory of her nights in Venice with Balint, she felt that she had stepped back from heaven into hell, a hell to which she had sentenced herself.

As the weeks – and then months – had gone by Adrienne thought more and more of what she had denied herself when she had banished Balint from her life. As she did so it had seemed that the arguments by which she had convinced herself she was doing right had dimmed into pale insignificance.

Whatever she did she was haunted by the memories of those weeks of joy and happiness, and hardly a day passed without her mentally reliving the love they had known together.

At Mezo-Varjas she would return again and again to the garden bench where Balint had first told her of his love and where she had been angry and offended by his passionate words of love and by the kiss he had implanted on her arm. How childish all that seemed now!

In her rooms at the Uzdy villa at Kolozsvar, where Adrienne often spent the night on her way to her father’s house, there were memories in every corner. There everything was the same as it had always been: the deep-piled white carpets in her sitting-room, strewn with soft cushions where, in front of the fire, Balint and she had lain so often in an embrace as chaste as if they had been brother and sister.