“—­Or rather lost.  For then the bother begins.  I can’t bear to think of getting her into the bedroom.  Undressing and going to bed!  That part is appalling unless you know each other very well.  And when you are just becoming acquainted!  The nice way is to have a cosy little supper for two.  The wine has an ungodly kick to it.  She immediately passes out, and when she comes to she is lying in bed under a shower of kisses.  As we can’t do it that way we shall have to avoid mutual embarrassment by making a show of passion.  If I speed up the tempo and pretend to be in a frenzy perhaps we shall not have time to think about the miserable details.  So I must possess her here, in this very spot, and she must think I have lost my head when she succumbs.

“It’s hard to arrange in this room, because there isn’t any divan.  The best way would be to throw her down on the carpet.  She can put her hands over her eyes, as they always do.  I shall take good care to turn down the lamp before she rises.

“Well, I had better prepare a cushion for her head.”  He found one and slid it under the chair.  “And I had better not wear suspenders, for they often cause ridiculous delays.”  He took them off and put on a belt.  “But then there is that damned question of the skirts!  I admire the novelists who can get a virgin unharnessed from her corsets and deflowered in the winking of an eye—­as if it were possible!  How annoying to have to fight one’s way through all those starched entanglements!  I do hope Mme. Chantelouve will be considerate and avoid those ridiculous difficulties as much as possible—­for her own sake.”

He consulted his watch.  “Half-past eight.  I mustn’t expect her for nearly an hour, because, like all women, she will come late.  What kind of an excuse will she make to Chantelouve, to get away tonight?  Well, that is none of my business.  Hmmm.  This water heater beside the fire looks like the invitation to the toilet, but no, the tea things handy banish any gross idea.”

And if Hyacinthe did not come?

“She will come,” he said to himself, suddenly moved.  “What motive would she have for staying away?  She knows that she cannot inflame me more than I am inflamed.”  Then, jumping from phase to phase of the same old question, “This will turn out badly, of course,” he decided.  “Once I am satisfied, disenchantment is inevitable.  Oh, well, so much the better, for with this romance going on I cannot work.”

“Miserable me! relapsing—­only in mind, alas!—­to the age of twenty.  I am waiting for a woman.  I who have scorned the doings of lovers for years and years.  I look at my watch every five minutes, and I listen, in spite of myself, thinking it is her step I hear on the stair.

“No, there is no getting around it.  The little blue flower, the perennial of the soul, is difficult to extirpate, and it keeps growing up again.  It does not show itself for twenty years, and then all of a sudden, you know not why nor how, it sprouts, and then forth comes a burst of blossoms.  My God!  I am getting foolish.”