[...] 'Reap what you've sown,' Lambert had said. Try to be happy without waiting for everyone else in the world to achieve happiness. Why not? Henri imagined a solid country home, pine trees, the smell of the scrub. 'But what will I write?' He continued walking, his head empty. 'The trap is well laid,' he said to himself. 'Just when you think you're escaping, it slams down on you.' To recapture the past and preserve the present with words is all very fine. But it can be done only if there is someone to read them; there's no sense to it except if the past, if the present, if life counts for something. If this world has no importance, if other men mean nothing, what point would there be to writing? There would be nothing left to do but yawn in boredom. Life can't be bought piecemeal; it has to be purchased in bulk — all or nothing. Only there isn't time enough for everything, that's the tragedy of it. Once more the refrain began repeating itself insistently in Henri's head. He was strongly attached to that paper, and his concerns about war, peace, and justice weren't just idle nonsense; throwing all that overboard was out of the question. And yet he was a writer, he wanted to write. Up to now he had managed more or less to reconcile everything, rather less than more. But if he gave in to Dubreuilh, he'd never be able to extricate himself. What then was he to do? Give in? Not give in? Get involved in politics? Write?