4 But she surely reflected on her life, dividing it into thirds as she did later when presenting herself to the judge of Rieux: the nine or ten years of her childhood, the nine or ten years of her marriage, the years of her waiting, which lengthened into eight or more.13 Beyond a young womanhood with only a brief period of sexuality, beyond a marriage in which her husband understood her little, may have feared her, and surely abandoned her, Bertrande dreamed of a husband and lover who would come back, and be different.
