For a long time Jacques Bourdillere had sworn that he would never marry, but he suddenly changed his mind. It happened suddenly, one summer, at the seashore.

 

One morning as he lay stretched out on the sand, watching the women coming out of the water, a little foot had struck him by its neatness and daintiness. He raised his eyes and was delighted with the whole person, although in fact he could see nothing but the ankles and the head emerging from a flannel¹ bathrobe carefully held closed. He was supposed to be sensual and a fast liver. It was therefore by the mere³ grace of the form that he was at first captured. Then he was held by the charm of the young girl's sweet mind, so simple and good, as fresh as her cheeks and lips.

 

He was presented to the family and pleased them. He immediately fell madly in love. When he saw Berthe Lannis in the distance, on the long yellow stretch of sand, he would tingle⁴ to the roots of his hair. When he was near her he would become silent, unable to speak or even to think, with a kind of throbbing⁵ at his heart, and a buzzing in his ears, and a bewilderment in his mind. Was that love?

 

He did not know or understand, but he had fully² decided⁶ to have this child for his wife.

 

Her parents hesitated for a long time, restrained by the young man's bad reputation. It was said that he had an old sweetheart, one of these binding⁷ attachments⁸ which one always believes to be broken off and yet which always hold.

 

Besides, for a shorter or longer period, he loved every woman who came within reach of his lips.

 

Then he settled down and refused, even once, to see the one with whom he had lived for so long. A friend took care of this woman's pension and assured her an income. Jacques paid, but he did not even wish to hear of her, pretending even to ignore her name. She wrote him letters which he never opened. Every week he would recognize the clumsy writing of the abandoned woman, and every week a greater anger surged within him against her, and he would quickly tear the envelope and the paper, without opening it, without reading one single line, knowing in advance the reproaches and complaints which it contained.

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