I went out, walked down the gravel path; the letter-box flag had disappeared: the postman had come. I took the mail. There was a letter for me: Myriam and Philip (were travelling in Mexico; on their way back, they planned to stop off in Chicago; they were hoping to see me. I hadn't seen them since '46, but Nancy had been in Paris the previous May and I had given her my address in the United States. There was certainly nothing extraordinary about Myriam writing to me, and yet I looked at her letter with stupefaction; it brought back a time when Lewis didn't exist for me. How could his absence have become that gaping, all-devouring emptiness? The garden was dead, and my memories as well. I found it impossible to take an interest for even a second in Myrian, in Philip, in anything. The only thing that mattered was that man for whom I was waiting, and I didn't even know who he was. I didn't know who I myself was. I circled the garden, I paced back and forth in the house, I called out, 'Lewis! Come back! Help me!' I swallowed whisky and benzedrine—in vain. That unbearable emptiness refused to leave me. I sat down at the bay window, and I watched.