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automatic time release to take it. The voluminous nightgown, the absence of the face: it was all calculated so that she could add this shot to the others without anyone suspecting it was of a different person.
    I put the photograph down on the table without taking my eyes off Claire, wondering if I should approach her.
    But Claire got hold of herself immediately. She sat up abruptly in her chair and wheeled around, once again looking like her usual self: severe, rigid, flawlessly beautiful.
    She didn’t say a word. She just stared at me, straight in the eyes, rather haughtily, to see if I was going to say anything.
    I said, gesturing toward the table: “That last photograph there, is that still Anne?”
    â€œWho else could it be?” she answered dryly, in a tone that did not invite me to pursue the matter.

VI : FALSE STARTS
    Claire put the photographs back in their folder. She seemed dissatisfied. I couldn’t figure out how to bring her back to that brief wordless scene that had taken place over the picture of her body (that it was her body I was by now absolutely certain). The state she had been thrown into, for a moment, by the idea that a man saw her in such a posture, seemed to suggest new possibilities that would have been unthinkable judging from her usual behavior.
    But when she asked me, with condescending politeness, what I thought of her talents as an executioner I felt once more how incapable I was of seducing her, or of even wanting to.
    Little Anne was enough to satisfy her need to humiliate someone. She offered her to others as a beast of prey might share its kill, instead of offering herself.
    I answered that I thought her talents as an executioner were on a level with her talents as a photographer, and that was a great compliment.
    â€œThank you,” she said, bowing to me with an ironical little smile.

    But all this lacked gaiety or spontaneity. Having recovered from an inexplicable moment of weakness Claire was on the defensive, ready to bite. I had the impression that she was now looking for a chance to demonstrate her strength, or her hard-heartedness.
    â€œAnd my model, aren’t you going to compliment me about her?”
    I decided to answer referring only to Anne, and assured Claire that in Anne she indeed possessed the most delectable of victims.
    â€œYou ran into her the other day, didn’t you?” she then asked me.
    â€œYes, in Montmartre. Only she wasn’t being delectable at all!”
    â€œOh? What do you mean?”
    I thought for a second, trying to make out what Claire knew of our encounter.
    â€œShe probably just didn’t feel like talking,” I said evasively.
    â€œDid she, by any chance, show a lack of respect for you?”
    â€œI didn’t know she owed me any.”
    And I smiled, amused by this idea.
    â€œShe owes it to you, if I so desire,” said Claire.
    That’s just what the situation proved to be, from then on.
    There was only one problem: to guess exactly what it was that Claire desired. Many things, no doubt, provided they were carried out in her presence.
    As for me, it was mostly curiosity that kept me there, at that particular point. But as soon as Anne came into the room, summoned by her friend in a Voice full of menaces, or perhaps promises, I was aware of the reawakening of certain other feelings.
    We had sat back down, Claire and I, in the two little comfortable armchairs facing the middle of the rug. The low table, of no use now, had been pushed into a corner.
    Anne therefore had to appear before us, according to the custom: standing up, arms at her sides, eyelids lowered. She was dressed in a pleated skirt and a blouse; not wearing shoes, she walked in her stocking feet. She had been called in to straighten out the incident at the bookstore and to be pun ished on the spot if she deserved it.
    Naturally, it wasn’t a question of knowing whether the girl deserved a punishment or not, but of finding an