When she reached an open glade a few minutes later, he was just getting up, covered with mud, his coat torn, and his hands bloody, while the brute was lying stretched out at full length, with the baron’s hunting knife driven into its shoulder up to the hilt.

The quarry was cut at night by torchlight.  It was a warm and dull evening, and the wan moon threw a yellow light onto the torches which made the night misty with their resinous smoke.  The hounds devoured the wild boar’s stinking entrails, and snarled and fought for them, while the prickers and the gentlemen, standing in a circle round the spoil, blew their horns as loud as they could.  The flourish of the hunting-horns resounded beyond the woods on that still night and was repeated by the echoes of the distant valleys, awaking the timid stags, rousing the yelping foxes, and disturbing the little rabbits in their gambols at the edge of the rides.

The frightened night-birds flew over the eager pack of hounds, while the women, who were moved by all these gentle and violent things, leaned rather heavily on the men’s arms; and turned aside into the forest rides, before the hounds had finished their meal, and Madame d’Avancelles, feeling languid after that day of fatigue and tenderness, said to the baron:  “Will you take a turn in the park, my friend?” And without replying, but trembling and nervous, he went with her, and immediately they kissed each other.  They walked slowly under the almost leafless trees through which the moonbeams filtered, and their love, their desires, their longing for a closer embrace became so vehement, that they nearly yielded to it at the foot of a tree.

The horns were not sounding any longer, and the tired hounds were sleeping in the kennels.  “Let us return,” the young woman said, and they went back.

When they got to the chateau and before they went in, she said in a weak voice:  “I am so tired that I shall go to bed, my friend.”  And as he opened his arms for a last kiss, she ran away, saying as a last good-bye:  “No....  I am going to sleep....  Let him who loves me follow me!”

An hour later, when the whole silent chateau seemed dead; the baron crept stealthily out of his room, and went and scratched at her door, and as she did not reply, he tried to open it, and found that it was not locked.

She was in a reverie, resting her arms against the window ledge, and he threw himself at her knees, which he kissed madly, through the nightdress.  She said nothing, but buried her delicate fingers caressingly in his hair, and suddenly, as if she had formed some great resolution, she whispered with her daring look:  “I shall come back, wait for me.”  And stretching out her hand, she pointed with her finger to an indistinct white spot at the end of the room; it was her bed.