“Yes, monsieur.”

“Please ask her to come down at once.”

They dropped into two armchairs and waited.  Both were filled with the same longing to escape before the appearance of the much-feared person.

A well-known, heavy tread could be heard descending the stairs.  A hand moved the knob, and both men watched the brass handle turn.  Then the door opened wide, and Madame Bondel stopped and looked to see who was there before she entered.  She looked, blushed, trembled, retreated a step, then stood motionless, her cheeks aflame and her hands resting against the sides of the door frame.

Tancret, as pale as if about to faint, had arisen, letting fall his hat, which rolled along the floor.  He stammered out:  “Mon Dieu—­madame—­it is I—­I thought—­I ventured—­I was so sorry—­”

As she did not answer, he continued:  “Will you forgive me?”

Then, quickly, carried away by some impulse, she walked toward him with her hands outstretched; and when he had taken, pressed, and held these two hands, she said, in a trembling, weak little voice, which was new to her husband: 

“Ah! my dear friend—­how happy I am!”

And Bondel, who was watching them, felt an icy chill run over him, as if he had been dipped in a cold bath.

FOUND ON A DROWNED MAN

Madame, you ask me whether I am laughing at you?  You cannot believe that a man has never been in love.  Well, then, no, no, I have never loved, never!

Why is this?  I really cannot tell.  I have never experienced that intoxication of the heart which we call love!  Never have I lived in that dream, in that exaltation, in that state of madness into which the image of a woman casts us.  I have never been pursued, haunted, roused to fever heat, lifted up to Paradise by the thought of meeting, or by the possession of, a being who had suddenly become for me more desirable than any good fortune, more beautiful than any other creature, of more consequence than the whole world!  I have never wept, I have never suffered on account of any of you.  I have not passed my nights sleepless, while thinking of her.  I have no experience of waking thoughts bright with thought and memories of her.  I have never known the wild rapture of hope before her arrival, or the divine sadness of regret when she went from me, leaving behind her a delicate odor of violet powder.

I have never been in love.

I have also often asked myself why this is.  And truly I can scarcely tell.  Nevertheless I have found some reasons for it; but they are of a metaphysical character, and perhaps you will not be able to appreciate them.

I suppose I am too critical of women to submit to their fascination.  I ask you to forgive me for this remark.  I will explain what I mean.  In every creature there is a moral being and a physical being.  In order to love, it would be necessary for me to find a harmony between these two beings which I have never found.  One always predominates; sometimes the moral, sometimes the physical.