The contents of the chocolate boxes revealed a mind given over entirely to trivialities and makeshift, always makeshift, making do, making last, putting to use somehow, wasting nothing except her time and her life and his time and his life. Even so, those times when he watched her secretly, he had had hopes that she possessed and would reveal to him the common secret that had been given to everybody except him. She had been weak, and it was simply impossible that she had lived along like that unless she was held by something, some truth, or some belief, some magic word, some comfort that she might have shared with him, if she had been willing to speak and able to speak. But the times grew rarer when he was able to watch her, because as he grew older he grew less and less able to bear the uneasiness that trembled all over her face when she felt his eyes on her. She would be sitting there knitting or sewing or mending or looking through one of the household magazines she loved, her face all intent on what was in her hands, and in the space of an instant she would become aware that he was looking at her, and the change in her expression would be terrible to see. Her face would become destroyed with shame and apprehension. And what it all amounted to, the beginning and the end of it, was that she was afraid of him. Once long ago he had been driven to challenge her. “Am I a monster or something?” he had shouted at her. “What’s the matter with you? What’s wrong with you? Why are you afraid to look at me? Am I a monster?” But she had trembled so violently that he had left her alone. She was afraid of questions. He left her alone. But it was no use going over all that again, no use thinking about it, better to put it out of his mind.

Still, he could not believe that even a human being as ineffectual as she had been could vanish from life without leaving any trace of herself at all. Any trace would be a sign that might guide him to the grief he wanted to suffer for her. But there was no sign.