“What a long time!” said Adrienne.

“It is still longer for me than for you, since you remain here, in our home.”

“Oh! our home! we have only one home:  in Chaussee-d’Antin, or the house at Grenoble, you know.”

“Dear wife!” cried Vaudrey, as he embraced her tenderly,—­sincerely, perhaps.

And he left.  He set out for Guise, returned in the evening and ordered the Director of the Press to send to all the journals by the Havas agency, a message which ran:  The Minister of the Interior passed the entire day yesterday at Guise, at Monsieur Delair’s, the deputy from L’Aisne.  He dined and slept at the house of his host.  Monsieur Vaudrey is to return to Paris this morning, at eleven o’clock.

Then he showed the news to Adrienne, and laughed as he said: 

“It is surprising! one cannot take a single step without it appears in print and the entire population is informed at once!”

“Tell me everything,” Adrienne replied, as she embraced him with her glance.  “Are you tired?  You look pale.  How did you spend the day?  You made a speech?  Were you applauded?”

It was mainly by kisses that Vaudrey answered.  What could he say to Adrienne?  She knew perfectly well how similar all these gatherings were, with their official routine.  Monsieur Delair had been very agreeable, but the minister had necessarily had to endure much talk, much importunity.

“The day seemed very long to me!”

“And to me also,” she said.

Sulpice indeed returned from Guise, but the last train on the previous night had taken him to Rue Prony, at Marianne’s.  He had then found out the secret of remaining at her side undisturbed for a long time, and the telegraph, managed by the Director of the Press, enabled him to prove an alibi to Adrienne from time to time.  He had taken to Marianne a huge bouquet of fresh flowers gathered in the park at Guise for Madame Vaudrey by Monsieur Delair’s two daughters.  That appeared to him to be quite natural.

Marianne, who was waiting for him, put the flowers in the Japanese vases and said to him as she threw her bare arms around him: 

“Very good!  You thought of me!——­”

The next morning Vaudrey left, more than ever enchained by the delight of her embraces.  He sometimes returned on foot, to breathe the vivifying freshness of the roseate dawn, or taking a cab, he stretched himself out wearily therein, as he drove to the ministry, musing over the hours so recently passed and striving to arrest them in their flight, to enjoy again their seductive joy and to squeeze as from a delicious fruit, all their intoxicating poetry, delight and fascination.

He closed his eyes.  He saw Marianne again with her eyes veiled as he kissed her, he drank in the odor of her hair that fell like a sort of fair cover over the lace pillow.  It seemed that he was permeated with her perfume.  He breathed the air with wide-open nostrils to inhale it again, to recover its scent and preserve it.  His whole frame trembled with emotion at the recollection of that lovely form that he had left whiter than the sheet of the bed, in the dim light that filtered through the opal-shaded lamp.