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Lol's universe: every afternoon, Michael Richardson begins to undress a woman other than Lol, and when other breasts appear, white beneath the black sheath, he remains there transfixed, a God wearied by this divesting, his only task, and in vain Lol waits for him to take her again, with her body rendered infirm by the other she cries out, she waits in vain, she cries out in vain.
    Then one day this infirm body stirs in the womb of God.

T HE MOMENT L OL saw him she recognized him. It was the man who had passed her house a few weeks before.
    That day he was alone.
    He was coming out of a cinema in the center of town. While the rest of the crowd hurried down the aisle, he took his time coming out. When he reached the sidewalk he blinked his eyes in the light, paused to look around, did not see Lol Stein, he was carrying his suitcoat with one hand, the coat slung over his shoulder, and with a movement of his arm he swung it back around in front, tossed it lightly into the air, then slipped it on, still taking his time.
    Did he look like her fiancé from Town Beach? No, not in the slightest. Did he have certain mannerisms that reminded her of her dead lover? Yes, no doubt he did, especially the way he looked at women. He too, like the other one, must have been an incorrigible ladies' man, must have borne the burdens of his body only with them, this body which, with every glance, demanded more. Yes, Lol decided, he did have, there emanated from him, that initial expression that Michael Richardson had had, the one that Lol had known before the ball.
    He was not as young as Lol had thought the first time she had seen him. But she may have been mistaken. She doubtless found that he must be an impatient person, perhaps easily given to cruelty.
    He scanned the boulevard in the vicinity of the cinema. Lol had taken refuge back around the corner of the building.
    Behind him, in her gray coat, Lol, unmoving, waits for him to make up his mind which way to go.
    This is what I see:
    The heat of a summer which till that day she had listlessly endured explodes and spreads. She is submerged in it. Everything is: the street, the town, this stranger. What heat, and what is this weariness? Nor is it the first time she has felt it. For several weeks she has sometimes wished she had a bed, or something akin to a bed, right there where she was, a bed on which to lay this heavy, leaden body, this body so difficult to move, this thankless and tender maturity, just on the verge of falling down upon an unresponsive, all-devouring earth. Ah, what is this body with which she suddenly feels herself saddled? Whatever became of the indefatigable, birdlike body that had been hers up till now?
    He made up his mind: he headed up the boulevard. Did he have a moment's hesitation? Yes. He looked at his watch and decided on that direction. Did Lol already know the name of the woman he was going to meet? Not yet, not quite. She is still unaware that it is the woman she has followed, through this man from South Tahla. And yet this woman is now no longer merely the woman she caught a glimpse of in front of her garden: I think she is already more for Lol.
    If there was a certain place where he had to be at a certain time, he apparently had plenty of time between that and the present moment. He therefore spent it in the following manner, walking rather in that direction than in some other, in the vague hope, which he never abandoned, thought Lol, of meeting some other woman, of following her and standing up the one he was supposed to meet. He spent this time in a way Lol found exquisite.
    He walked at a steady pace, close to the shop windows. He is not the first who, for the past several weeks, has been walking this way. He would turn and stare at any woman who was beautiful and alone, sometimes he would stop and ogle them in a vulgar way. Each time he did, Lol gave a start, as though he had done it to her.
    On a beach, in the full flush of her youth, she had previously