He tried to console her, but she wanted to start, to return, and to go home immediately, and she kept saying as she walked along quickly:  “Good heavens! good heavens!” He said to her:  “Louise!  Louise!  Please let us stop here.”  But now her cheeks were red and her eyes hollow, and as soon as they got to the railway station in Paris, she left him, without even saying good-bye.

III

When he met her in the omnibus next day, she appeared to him to be changed and thinner, and she said to him:  “I want to speak to you; we will get down at the Boulevard.”

As soon as they were on the pavement, she said:  “We must bid each other good-bye; I cannot meet you again after what has happened.”  “But why?” he asked.  “Because I cannot; I have been culpable, and I will not be so again.”

Then he implored her, tortured by desire, maddened by the wish of having her entirely, in the absolute freedom of nights of love, but she replied firmly:  “No, I cannot, I cannot.”  He, however, only grew all the more excited, and promised to marry her, but she said again:  “No.”  And left him.

For a week he did not see her.  He could not manage to meet her, and as he did not know her address, he thought that he had lost her altogether.  On the ninth day, however, there was a ring at his bell, and when he opened it, she was there.  She threw herself into his arms, and did not resist any longer, and for three months she was his mistress.  He was beginning to grow tired of her, when she told him she was pregnant, and then he had one idea and wish:  To break with her at any price.  As, however, he could not do that, not knowing how to begin or what to say, full of anxiety through the fear of that child which was growing, he took a decisive step:  One night he changed his lodgings, and disappeared.

The blow was so heavy that she did not look for the man who had abandoned her, but threw herself at her mother’s knees and confessed her misfortune, and some months after, she gave birth to a boy.

IV

Years passed, and Francois Tessier grew old without there having been any alteration in his life.  He led the dull, monotonous life of bureaucrates, without hopes and without expectations.  Every day he got up at the same time, went through the same streets, went through the same door, passed the same porter, went into the same office, sat in the same chair, and did the same work.  He was alone in the world, alone, during the day in the midst of his colleagues, and alone at night in his bachelor’s lodgings, and he laid by a hundred francs a month, against old age.

Every Sunday he went to the Champs-Elysees, to watch the elegant people, the carriages and the pretty women, and the next day he used to say to one of his colleagues:  “The return of the carriages from the Bois de Boulogne was very brilliant yesterday.”  One fine Sunday morning, however, he went into the Parc Monceau, where the mothers and nurses, sitting on the sides of the walks, watched the children playing, and suddenly Francois Tessier started.  A woman passed by, holding two children by the hand; a little boy of about ten and a little girl of four.  It was she.