No, this young woman, who all in all did her best to fulfill her professional obligations meticulously, felt no great love for the women taking the waters. We can cite three reasons for this:

Envy: These women came here directly from husbands and lovers, from a world she imagined teeming with a thousand possibilities inaccessible to her, even though she had prettier breasts, longer legs, and more regular features.

Besides envy, impatience: These women came here with their destinies far away, and she was here without a destiny, with one year the same as the next; she was frightened by the thought that, in this small town, she was living an eventless time span, and, despite her youth, constantly thought that life was passing her by before she had begun to live.

Third, there was the instinctive dislike inspired in her by their sheer numbers, which diminished each woman's worth as an individual. She was surrounded by a sad excess of bosoms, among which even a bosom as attractive as hers lost its worth.

Without a smile, she had just wrapped the last of three women when her thin colleague stuck her head into the room and shouted: "Ruzena! Telephone!"

Her colleagues expression was so reverent that Ruzena knew at once who had phoned her. Blushing, she went behind the cubicles, picked up the receiver, and gave her name.

Klima identified himself and asked her when she would be free to see him.

"I finish work at three. We could see each other at four."

Then they had to agree on where to meet. Ruzena suggested the spa's big brasserie, which was open all day. The thin nurse, who was standing beside Ruzena and keeping her eyes fixed on her lips, gave an approving nod. The trumpeter replied that he preferred to see Ruzena in a place where they could be alone and suggested driving out into the country in his car.

"What for? Where would we go?"