She had been married for three years and never once left the valley of Ciré, where her husband owned two cotton mills. They had no children and she led a quiet, happy life in a house which was hidden by trees and which his employees referred to as ‘the château’. Monsieur Vasseur, her much older husband, was a good man whom she loved with absolute faithfulness. Her mother came to spend the summers at Ciré, and returned to Paris as soon as the leaves began to fall.

Every autumn, Jeanne would develop a cough when for five months the narrow valley through which a river wound was shrouded in mist and fog. Initially, a light mist would cover all the meadows so that they looked like a great pond from which rooftops protruded. Then, like a rising tide, this thick cloud would envelop everything in sight. The valley became a ghostly place where mildewed trees stood dripping with moisture and men who knew each other well could pass unrecognized within ten feet of each other.

People crossing the slopes on either side and looking down into the white hole which was the little valley could always see emerging from a great mountain of fog the two giant chimneys of Monsieur Vasseur’s establishments belching out into the sky, night and day, two columns of black smoke. This was the only sign of life in what appeared to be a hollow filled with a cloud of cottonwool.

One year, as October came round, her doctor advised the young woman to spend the winter in Paris at her mother’s, since the air in the valley was becoming too dangerous for her health. Accordingly, she left. During her first few months away she thought constantly about the house and the routine she had abandoned. She missed the familiar pieces of furniture and the quiet tenor of her life there. Eventually, however, she began to very much enjoy all the parties and the dinners, all the dances and the entertainments and became accustomed to her new way of living.

Until then there had always been something underdeveloped about her, a certain hesitancy, a little adolescent dreaminess. She had been slow to engage with people and to smile. But now she became gay, vivacious and full of fun. Men flirted with her. She enjoyed the light banter and the compliments and took none of it seriously. Through marriage she had learned enough about love to find it slightly repulsive. The thought of submitting her body to the clumsy caresses of these bearded creatures made her laugh in pity and shudder a little with repugnance. She was at a complete loss to understand how women could consent to this kind of degrading contact with strangers. Surely one’s own husband was quite enough. She would have loved hers more if they had been able to live together as friends, limiting their intimacy to chaste kisses soulfully exchanged.