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The strategies underlying Thomas Hardy’s story « An Imaginative Woman » could be assimilated to a conversion from one system into another. The first system lies in a tension between two conceptions of the notion of trace: the trace as a supplement produced by the addition of layers accumulated through time, and the trace as subtraction and wearing away, as pure remains of something which has disappeared. Mrs Marchmill’s misunderstanding will be to focus on the first model without seeing the second one, by which she will be caught up in the end. But this first polarity conceals another one, which is based on an economic transaction, a negotiation of desire and pleasure. The failure of the mediation attempted by Mrs Marchmill corresponds to an abortive strategy of economic recycling, where the artistic is perverted by the sentimental and is reduced to pure consumption.