She barely, at long intervals, cast a glance
into the arcade, and was particularly at her ease in cloudy weather,
when it was dark and she could conceal her lassitude in the gloom.
The damp and disgusting arcade, crossed by a lot of wretched drenched
pedestrians, whose umbrellas dripped upon the tiles, seemed to her like
an alley in a low quarter, a sort of dirty, sinister corridor, where
no one would come to seek and trouble her. At moments, when she saw the
dull gleams of light that hung around her, when she smelt the bitter
odour of the dampness, she imagined she had just been buried alive, that
she was underground, at the bottom of a common grave swarming with dead.
And this thought consoled and appeased her, for she said to herself that
she was now in security, that she was about to die and would suffer no
more.
But sometimes she had to keep her eyes open; Suzanne paid her a visit,
and remained embroidering near the counter all the afternoon. The wife
of Olivier, with her putty face and slow movements, now pleased Therese,
who experienced strange relief in observing this poor, broken-up
creature, and had made a friend of her. She loved to see her at her
side, smiling with her faint smile, more dead than alive, and bringing
into the shop the stuffy odour of the cemetery.
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