In the afternoon, they walk together along a path bordered with yellow reeds where, from time to time, herons drift softly by. It pains her, it pains her greatly, to be walking there with him, and not with Guillaume; and that pain will be inscribed in her for months to come. Nearly every time she’s with him, albeit of her own free will, of her own desire, it will pain her, pain her continually, to see him standing in Guillaume’s shoes, to herself be putting him in those shoes: in her brain it’s a sort of nightmare every time. And yet she has to go through with it, she knows she has to pass through that dark night. It’s dangerous, though, far more dangerous for her than for these two men, who will also suffer, of course, but she — she is risking death, or something worse than death.