the train every object of sensation—­the wide countryside, the green things with their pungent scents, the house, the vegetables—­had stirred her to such a degree that now it seemed to her as if she had left Paris twenty years ago.  Yesterday’s existence was far, far away, and she was full of sensations of which she had no previous experience.  Georges, meanwhile, was giving her neck little coaxing kisses, and this again added to her sweet unrest.  With hesitating hand she pushed him from her, as though he were a child whose affectionate advances were fatiguing, and once more she told him that he ought to take his departure.  He did not gainsay her.  All in good time—­he would go all in good time!

But a bird raised its song and again was silent.  It was a robin in an elder tree below the window.

“Wait one moment,” whispered Georges; “the lamp’s frightening him.  I’ll put it out.”

And when he came back and took her waist again he added: 

“We’ll relight it in a minute.”

Then as she listened to the robin and the boy pressed against her side, Nana remembered.  Ah yes, it was in novels that she had got to know all this!  In other days she would have given her heart to have a full moon and robins and a lad dying of love for her.  Great God, she could have cried, so good and charming did it all seem to her!  Beyond a doubt she had been born to live honestly!  So she pushed Georges away again, and he grew yet bolder.

“No, let me be.  I don’t care about it.  It would be very wicked at your age.  Now listen—­I’ll always be your mamma.”

A sudden feeling of shame overcame her.  She was blushing exceedingly, and yet not a soul could see her.  The room behind them was full of black night while the country stretched before them in silence and lifeless solitude.  Never had she known such a sense of shame before.  Little by little she felt her power of resistance ebbing away, and that despite her embarrassed efforts to the contrary.  That disguise of his, that woman’s shift and that dressing jacket set her laughing again.  It was as though a girl friend were teasing her.

“Oh, it’s not right; it’s not right!” she stammered after a last effort.

And with that, in face of the lovely night, she sank like a young virgin into the arms of this mere child.  The house slept.

Next morning at Les Fondettes, when the bell rang for lunch, the dining-room table was no longer too big for the company.  Fauchery and Daguenet had been driven up together in one carriage, and after them another had arrived with the Count de Vandeuvres, who had followed by the next train.  Georges was the last to come downstairs.  He was looking a little pale, and his eyes were sunken, but in answer to questions he said that he was much better, though he was still somewhat shaken by the violence of the attack.  Mme Hugon looked into his eyes with an anxious smile and adjusted his hair which had been carelessly combed that morning, but he drew back as though embarrassed by this tender little action.  During the meal she chaffed Vandeuvres very pleasantly and declared that she had expected him for five years past.