How long the next day was! She walked in her little garden, going and coming along the same paths, stopping in front of the flower beds, the espaliered tree, the plaster curé, contemplating with amazement all these things from the past that she knew so well. How distant the ball already seemed to her! What was it that put such a distance between the morning of the day before yesterday and the evening of this day? Her trip to La Vaubyessard had made a hole in her life, like those great chasms that a storm, in a single night, will sometimes open in the mountains. Yet she resigned herself: reverently she put away in the chest of drawers her beautiful dress and even her satin shoes, whose soles had been yellowed by the slippery wax of the dance floor. Her heart was like them: contact with wealth had laid something over it that would not be wiped away.

And so remembering that ball became an occupation for Emma. Each time Wednesday returned, she would say to herself as she woke: “Ah! A week ago … two weeks ago … three weeks ago, I was there!” And little by little, the faces became confused in her memory, she forgot the tunes of the contra dances, she no longer saw the liveries and the rooms as distinctly; some of the details vanished, but her longing remained.