I waited to hear if she had anything else to say, but she seemed to have come to a kind of rest. Even her hands were in a state of repose. In clinical terms, it was a promising sign. We were near the end of the session.

“Mademoiselle, the method I use to treat patients is hypnosis. Do you know what that is?”

“Is it the same as mesmerism?”

“Mesmerism is what it used to be called, but these days it’s only ever called mesmerism in circuses. The scientific name for it is hypnotism. It seems to have a therapeutic effect on my patients. In a minute, I’m going to put you into a hypnotic trance. It’s while you are in this trance state that we’re going to do all the hard work that is going to heal you. After, you won’t remember a thing. Will you allow me to do that?”

I can only describe the expression on her face as one of imploring trust. I explained to her that, once hypnotized, she would remain in that state for a quarter of an hour before I ended the trance. Henceforth, she would undergo hypnosis at the beginning of our every session. The aim, I said, was for her to attain a state of deep relaxation that would relieve her neuroses.

And so the crossing began. For a quarter-hour I wandered the corridors of her mind: a joyous childhood in Saigon marred by the early deaths of her parents (her father of influenza, her mother, soon after, of grief), a solitary youth spent orbiting indifferent relatives in France, and falling passionately in love at the age of fifteen. In my years of clinical work, I’d encountered the charred remnants of many a love cut short. But the quality of Madeleine’s love was different: here was a soul that had loved wholly and with abandon. It was so rare and so true that I found myself wishing I could stay there to be warmed in its afterglow. Yet I also sensed it with a certain awe: a love of this amplitude was powerful enough to burn everything in its wake, leaving nothing but ashes.

I was writing up the notes on the session with Madeleine when there was a knock at the door. It was the registrar. “Sorry to disturb, doctor, but there’s been a change in this afternoon’s schedule. An officer. Claims to know you.” He looked down at his clipboard. “Aristide Artopoulos.”

“Artopoulos! Yes, we’re old friends.” A pang of guilt pricked my heart. I’d received several letters from him since the beginning of the war, each of them urging me to see him. I’d set them all aside, unable to decide what to do about them, putting my response in a temporary but indefinite state of suspension. “Where is he now?”