Free Sunday by Georges Simenon

had returned to the Flat Stone. At last, after three days of it, he had seized a basket from the kitchen, set off for Maubi's kitchen garden at an almost normal pace.
    He did sometimes go there to fetch vegetables or herbs himself. More often, he entrusted this task to Maubi when the latter came, early in the morning, to ask for his orders.
    He must not walk too fast, for he would have sworn that Berthe was following him with her eyes, from one window or another.
    Fortunately the lower part of the kitchen garden was not visible from the house. It adjoined the plantation. By vaulting a low tumbledown wall, there were only a hundred yards of undergrowth to cross before reaching the rock.
    Nancy, who could not but have heard him coming, had not made the slightest move to cover herself. Her clothes, her plaited straw bag lay beside her, and she wore dark sun-glasses which prevented him from seeing her eyes.
    He had had the impression of committing rape, awkwardly, clumsily.
    He had never plunged with such animal passion into the warm flesh of a female before, and on account of those pupils whose expression escaped him, that mouth half open in a smile which he could not understand, he had raised his fist, at one moment, to strike her.
    She had laughed, with a laugh which went on and on, while saying with that note of tenderness usually reserved for children:
    'Emile . . . My clever little Emile! . . .'
    It was she who all of a sudden had taken the initiative, who had played the man's role, triumphantly, to finish by murmuring, as she allowed her body to relax:
    'Happy now?'
    Somebody was calling, somewhere in the wood, not Berthe's voice, but Madame Lavaud's, and Nancy had once again put on her pitying smile.
    'Off you go! . . . Your wife will be cross . . .'
    For appearance's sake Emile had been obliged to put a few vegetables in his basket. He walked with his head lowered. Her face and body looking cool in a light dress without a crease out of place, Berthe was busy writing in the shade, beside the bar.
    'I think Madame Lavaud wants you for something.'
    Nothing was happening as he had expected. He was being allowed to reach the kitchen and get back into the rhythm of his routine. Then, a short while before lunch, Nancy came in, her straw bag in her hand, went up to the bar without anything happening.
    'A drink, Emile! I'm dying of thirst!'
    What was Emile afraid of? He reproached himself to find his hand trembling as he picked up the bottle of pastis.
    'Have one too. On me.'
    Berthe had not even raised her head. On an impulse, Nancy stretched herself and said ecstatically:
    'What a marvellous morning's sunbathing, Emile! Your wife ought to try it. She lives on the Riviera and she's as white as a Londoner!'
    What place did this incident have in the whole picture? Was it a cause among other causes ? Next day he was on the point of following Nancy. It seemed essential to him. It was almost an imperative. He had already collected the basket, from a dark corner of the kitchen where Madam Lavaud was drawing the fowls.
    'No!' he had heard a voice saying.
    It was his wife, of course, standing in the doorway. He had stammered :
    'I'm just going to fetch some . . .'
    'If you need anything from the kitchen garden Madame Lavaud will see to it.'
    Nothing else. He had not dared to insist. But he had not forgotten that humiliation, nor the one that followed the next day.
    It was market day. Emile had thought it all out. By hurrying, he would reach the turning, on the slope of the road back, with time in hand to leave his car there for a while, to go and join Nancy at the Flat Stone.
    He was so confident about it that before leaving he made a rendezvous with her in a glance. She had understood. They already looked at one another like lovers of long standing.
    Gaily he had plunged into the bright commotion and the smells of the Forville market, called at the harbour, then the dairy, the butcher, doing without his usual coffee at Justin's.
    The