She was murmuring under his hand. He closed his mind to her insinuating words. He summoned back from his memory the lost Maria of their past. He felt the modesty of her hands and saw the trust of her eyes. That Maria he worshiped; to love her had been his only religion, the guiding principle of his entire life. He fixed his mind on this Maria, and even now she did not fail him: just to imagine her was enough. Kissing her breasts, he shuddered and came. The ejaculation felt violent. The instant it was over, he pulled out of her with a gesture of disgust, hating himself, hating the woman his lost Maria had become.

He had not satisfied her, as he had once been able to do so easily. She caught hold of his hand and pressed it hard between her thighs. She closed her eyes and rubbed against him in a frantic way. It took her more than five minutes to achieve satisfaction, but her pleasure seemed intense; she at once released his hand.

“Go to sleep.” He jerked away from her, rose, and began to fasten his clothing. “Go to sleep. You can surely sleep now.”

She made no reply, but lay still, her eyes closed. Lazare sat down on one of the small, uncomfortable, priceless chairs. He felt he hated the chair, the Marie Antoinette bed, all the past years of acquisitions and accumulation. The houses, the cars, the planes, the paintings: he loathed them. He had acquired them believing they could assuage loss, but now he looked down into the emptiness at the heart of his life and felt sick with fear.

He sat there, in hard-faced desperation, for an hour. Maria never moved once during that time. He was afraid to speak or move himself in case she was only pretending to be asleep, but he longed to escape from this room. He wanted to go out into the park and walk beneath the avenues of sweet chestnut. He wanted to breathe clean air, and think, and be alone.

These pills had been his last hope, the last component in a Faustian pact he had made. Now he saw them for the disaster they were. Never mind what happened on the day of the collection, never mind if Maria failed to appear, never mind if her imagination remained barren, never mind if he had to endure another five years as infernal as the last five—he would destroy the remaining White Doves and purchase no more.

The business would suffer eventually—but he no longer cared. He could keep it operating, and by the same means. He would simply continue to employ, at inflated salaries, the two anonymous gifted young men who tried to imitate the inimitable, and who had produced pastiche Cazarèses these past five years. If they could just survive these coming collections, he would reactivate the negotiations begun a year before. In due course he would sell the company, and then he and Maria would—would what? He realized suddenly that he could see no future for them unless some doctor somewhere, some magician he had not already consulted, could find a cure.