How many times they had been there together in the first days of their love! It was there that Balint had first taught her to kiss and where he had once, on a dark evening as dusk was falling, tried to take her by force. How she had rebelled! It was in the same room, much later, when she had just started to become aware of all that true love entailed, that she had written him that terrible letter, the letter that was to have put an end to their friendship, in which she had explained that she did not want to become his mistress, that she could never ever become his mistress for ‘if that were to happen’ she felt she would have to kill herself …

It was there, in June the year before, that it had been decided with her father and younger sister Margit that they should go to Venice and where, when she had obtained the necessary agreement from her husband and mother-in-law, that she had first known, even though she hardly admitted it to herself, that she had taken the great decision to ask Balint to join her believing that she would never return alive.

In those days her desire had been stronger than anything she had previously known.

Even at Almasko it had been the same. Here, too, everything reminded her of her love for Balint: in her bedroom, when she had been ill and Uzdy had left the house at dawn, Balint had come to see her; in the forests where they had walked their arms enlaced; and, above all, here under the great beech which had been the only witness of their secret meeting.

Adrienne had come here often since her return from Venice. And almost every day she had stood there, alone and forlorn.

Tormented by her memories, there arose in her one over-riding desire – to see Balint again. During the long, long months of separation she had been assailed by all sorts of conflicting emotions, emotions that seemed to have only one thing in common and that was that they all led to one conclusion: nothing that she had previously thought sacred and unchangeable was valid any more.

Adrienne had had little news of Balint. Occasionally she had heard that he had been in Budapest, or at Denestornya with his mother; but these had been mere geographical facts – of his life she had heard nothing. She longed to know what he was doing and above all what he was feeling. Did he still remember her or had he already found some other woman with whom he could console himself? When this thought came to her the pain of jealousy was so sharp that she nearly cried out in despair.

Naturally she had blamed herself for these pangs of jealousy, for was it not she who had sent him away, giving him his freedom and insisting that he resign his place in her life?

Why, she wondered, had she ever done this?

Why? Because she had had to do so. It had been impossible to divorce her husband while he, in turn, would never have let her go but would coldly and ruthlessly have killed both her and her lover. She had felt then that she had no choice, for she knew that if they were to meet again she would never have been able to resist him or deny herself to him … and, then, when her husband came to her, it would be a defilement impossible to bear. This was the moral argument that Adrienne had then felt to be ineluctable. Slowly, however, as the months of longing and loneliness went by, as she suffered and jealously waited she knew not for what, this argument had somehow lost its force.

Adrienne’s once strong will had been eroded. Surely, she had begun to reason with herself, nothing had changed. Wasn’t everything always going to be the same? Could she really go on living like this? Was it not madness to banish from her life the only man she ever had or ever would give her heart to, to throw away the only chance of bliss she had ever known, she who had even seen her own child removed from her?

It was her mother-in-law who had done that and even here her husband had not taken her side. For Uzdy, she knew, she was merely an object with whom he could satisfy his desires, no more real than a whore. Her whole relation with her husband was a disgrace to human dignity, and so what would it matter if, in her slavery and subjection, she was to take what life might offer her? What difference would it make to her life? Why not? Whyever not? And it was now that she had come to believe that it was only pride and conceit and meaningless love of self that had led her to reject a double life, a rejection for which she was now paying with such anguish – and to what purpose? Surely this suffering was all for nothing?

These thoughts, so contrary to everything she had formerly held sacred, chased themselves in her brain and, though she tried hard to banish them, returned with ever-growing force, stronger and stronger. Having only herself to argue with she fought with her memories and her desire. And all the while her whole being cried out to be with him once again.

It was almost dark when they parted, but both of them knew that far from being a dismal farewell, it was the beginning of future happiness.

Balint stayed by the tree until Adrienne looked back from the edge of the woods across the valley and then disappeared along the forest path.

Then he too started back to his camp.

On the way he was thinking of what they had now agreed. Over and over again he went over in his mind the code by which they would arrange their meetings – any four numbers that might be found in their otherwise harmless letters would signify the hour and day they were to be together.

Balint decided that he would build a little shooting lodge in that meadow where his tent now stood, and from it a path for the forest guards would be cut to where they had just met; Adrienne would be able to use that whenever she could get away from her husband’s house.