But what she didn't dare admit was the regret of not having been able to find the right path at the beginning of her life.
And now, at the beginning of her decline, which would move faster and faster, she would always be the whore, the receptacle of the human seed.
They went down the path again which led to the foot of the mountain. The evening air became fresher and fresher.
“This night will be the last that I spend here,” she thought. “Poor Tony… I'm going to cause him so much pain. But he'll console himself. I need pleasure. It's as if there were a poison in my body! I feel it burning me everywhere!
“No, my place isn't here… anyway, one man isn't enough for me. I've received the homage of too many cocks for too long for it to be otherwise! All the bastards who fucked me have marked me for life. Alright! I'll give them my ass! But I want them to fuck me to death!”
And for the last time, not wanting to act like a little girl, while the evening stretched its cloak of stars over the countryside, Danielle contemplated the serenity of this land that had seen her birth.
She turned around, letting herself be separated from her husband who was waiting for her several yards lower, then she calmly began to walk again.
But in her heart, an old stifled sob demanded to be let out.
They reached the village at the same time as a troop of sheep returning to the flock. She caressed one of them, the smallest, and in this gesture, she put everything which was still fresh in her body, all her disappointed dreams, all the nostalgia of the little girl she had once been.
Her whole past returned to her again with a suddenness which made her wipe a tear from the corner of her eye.
Then, when they were alone again, there was no longer a wife but an obsessed and unsatisfied whore…
The next day, profiting by Tony's daily work in the fields, she left surreptitiously. No one had time to notice her departure.
She piled her bags into the bus that linked the village to the city.
She disappeared in that sun-filled morning.
A bird sang its final song.
The years passed.
An old farmer, who had known Danielle before her marriage, said that he had passed a drunk girl escorted by several sailors in an African town…
“She looked strangely like her,” he added in a dreamy tone to those who surrounded him.
But perhaps he was wrong.
Destiny had been her master. She had loved, her body had been bruised on all sides…
No one could ever mean anything to her.
She had pursued her dream like so many others: the desire for the immortality of the body, the thirst for pleasure that everyone possesses, the most luxurious caresses… and the most lascivious physical ecstasies… The lucky whore.