The gentleman really was sleeping, but he soon roused himself, and said that in order to sleep well, one needed to go and lie out on a meadow, under the sun. The lady went to change and get a dressing gown. She put on her shorts and didn’t forget to bring a book; because she assumed, though she was rushing, that nothing would happen.

The lady climbed up a path behind the hotel, until she reached a small meadow hemmed by the shadow of a beech forest. She opened her dressing gown on the grass, and she had just lain back when the gentleman reached her, then went on ahead, working his way through the bushes, perhaps in search of another meadow higher up. The lady was grateful that the sun was hot.

A good deal of time passed. The shade of the beech trees reached the lady, and she started to shiver. The sun already looked sad above the snowcaps. She heard the sound of shifting stones: the man was slowly coming down the path. The lady looked at his naked torso, on the thin side, graceful. Without thinking, she impulsively said hello. The gentleman stopped, and the lady thought he was looking at her legs, as she saw him blushing discreetly below his tan. She felt no pleasure, just a sharp sense of shame. She stood, and picked up her dressing gown.

In the evening the seat across from the gentleman was occupied. A large man dressed in brown corduroy, with his back to the lady, prevented her from gazing at her idol and intercepting his distracted glances. Through the window, above the man’s massive shoulders, the lady no longer saw the neighbouring mountain, only a pink blade of sunlight about to be extinguished on the patches of snow on the facing valley.

After lunch, the new man introduced himself. He was friendly and had big, stubby, good-natured hands. With him was his eighteen-year-old son. The lady went up to her room and chose, from among her dresses, a white evening gown she’d set aside the first day, deeming it inappropriate for that sort of hotel. It was a dress that exposed her shoulders, to be worn with a short red velvet cape. The lady put it on and changed her hairstyle, gathering it at the top of her head with little combs. She applied her make-up carefully, then went back down to the room. No one paid attention to her.

The small group was gathered around the radio, dominated by a giant man, the chief technician of the power plant, who was in charge of making the device work. The friend’s son started staring persistently at the lady, and then, encouraged by a nod, asked if she liked the music and invited her to dance. The large friend winked over at them now and then, and the gentleman was deep in conversation with him. Between dances, the lady could hear the man’s voice, and the unpleasant inflection of his dialect. She realized at a certain point that she could hear what they were saying, and she started listening.