He had begun to read the novel a few days before. He abandoned it because of urgent business, then reopened it on his train ride back to the estate; he slowly let himself be drawn in by the plot and the character portrayal. That afternoon, after writing a letter to his attorney and discussing a matter of tenant farming with the butler, he returned to the book in the tranquility of his study, which overlooked the oak park. Settled in his favorite armchair, with his back to the door that would have bothered him with its irritating possibility of intrusions, he let his left hand caress the green velvet once and again and began to read the final chapters. His memory retained effortlessly the names and images of the protagonists; the novelistic illusion took hold of him almost immediately. He relished the almost perverse pleasure of letting himself detach line by line from what surrounded him, feeling at the same time that his head rested comfortably on the velvet of the high-backed chair, that the cigarettes were within reach, that beyond the large windows, the evening air was dancing under the oaks. Word by word, absorbed by the sordid dilemma of the heroes, letting himself go towards the images that took shape and acquired color and movement, he was a witness to the last meeting in the mountain cabin. First, the woman entered, cautious; now the lover arrived, his face scratched by the whip of a branch. Admirably, she stanched the blood with her kisses, but he rejected her caresses; he had not come to repeat the ceremonies of a secret passion, protected by a world of dry leaves and furtive paths. The dagger was warming against his chest, and beneath it, freedom crouched. An eager dialogue ran through the pages like a stream of serpents, and one felt that everything had been decided from eternity. Even those caresses that entangled the lover's body as if trying to hold him back and dissuade him, abominably sketched the shape of another body that needed to be destroyed. Nothing had been forgotten: alibis, chances, possible mistakes. From that moment, each instant had its precise role assigned. The double relentless check was barely interrupted for a hand to caress a cheek. It was beginning to get dark. Without looking at each other, rigidly bound to the task that awaited them, they parted at the cabin door. She had to go down the path leading north. From the opposite path, he turned for a moment to see her running with her hair down. He ran in turn, crouching among the trees and hedges, until he distinguished in the purple haze of twilight the avenue leading to the house. The dogs should not bark, and they did not bark. The butler would not be there at that hour, and he was not. He climbed the three porch steps and entered. From the blood pounding in his ears came the woman's words: first a blue room, then a gallery, a carpeted staircase. At the top, two doors. No one in the first room, no one in the second. The door to the drawing room, and then the dagger in his hand, the light from the windows, the high-backed velvet armchair, the man's head in the chair reading a novel.
