“I gave it to Mme. la Vicomtesse herself, sir; she was in her carriage and just about to start.”

“For the town?”

“I don’t think so, sir.  Mme. la Vicomtesse had post-horses.”

“Ah! then she is going away,” said the Baron.

“Yes, sir,” the man answered.

Gaston de Nueil at once prepared to follow Mme. de Beauseant.  She led the way as far as Geneva, without a suspicion that he followed.  And he?  Amid the many thoughts that assailed him during that journey, one all-absorbing problem filled his mind—­“Why did she go away?” Theories grew thickly on such ground for supposition, and naturally he inclined to the one that flattered his hopes—­“If the Vicomtesse cares for me, a clever woman would, of course, choose Switzerland, where nobody knows either of us, in preference to France, where she would find censorious critics.”

An impassioned lover of a certain stamp would not feel attracted to a woman clever enough to choose her own ground; such women are too clever.  However, there is nothing to prove that there was any truth in Gaston’s supposition.

The Vicomtesse took a small house by the side of the lake.  As soon as she was installed in it, Gaston came one summer evening in the twilight.  Jacques, that flunkey in grain, showed no sign of surprise, and announced M. le Baron de Nueil like a discreet domestic well acquainted with good society.  At the sound of the name, at the sight of its owner, Mme. de Beauseant let her book fall from her hands; her surprise gave him time to come close to her, and to say in tones that sounded like music in her ears: 

“What a joy it was to me to take the horses that brought you on this journey!”

To have the inmost desires of the heart so fulfilled!  Where is the woman who could resist such happiness as this?  An Italian woman, one of those divine creatures who, psychologically, are as far removed from the Parisian as if they lived at the Antipodes, a being who would be regarded as profoundly immoral on this side of the Alps, an Italian (to resume) made the following comment on some French novels which she had been reading.  “I cannot see,” she remarked, “why these poor lovers take such a time over coming to an arrangement which ought to be the affair of a single morning.”  Why should not the novelist take a hint from this worthy lady, and refrain from exhausting the theme and the reader?  Some few passages of coquetry it would certainly be pleasant to give in outline; the story of Mme. de Beauseant’s demurs and sweet delayings, that, like the vestal virgins of antiquity, she might fall gracefully, and by lingering over the innocent raptures of first love draw from it its utmost strength and sweetness.  M. de Nueil was at an age when a man is the dupe of these caprices, of the fence which women delight to prolong; either to dictate their own terms, or to enjoy the sense of their power yet longer, knowing instinctively as they do that it must soon grow less.  But, after all, these little boudoir protocols, less numerous than those of the Congress of London, are too small to be worth mention in the history of this passion.