A desire for shade and mystery led them toward the arbor near the grottoes.  But the noise of footsteps which they heard, coming from the covered alley, made them stop for a moment, and they saw, through the leaves, Montessuy, with his arm around the Princess Seniavine’s waist.  Quietly they were walking toward the palace.  Jacques and Therese, hiding behind the enormous Terminus god, waited until they had passed.

Then she said to Dechartre, who was looking at her silently: 

“That is amazing!  I understand now why the Princess Seniavine, this winter, asked my father to advise her about buying horses.”

Yet Therese admired her father for having conquered that beautiful woman, who passed for being hard to please, and who was known to be wealthy, in spite of the embarrassments which her mad disorder had caused her.  She asked Jacques whether he did not think the Princess was beautiful.  He said she had elegance.  She was beautiful, doubtless.

Therese led Jacques to the moss-covered steps which, ascending behind the grottoes, led to the Gerbe-de-l’Oise, formed of leaden reeds in the midst of a great pink marble vase.  Tall trees closed the park’s perspective and stood at the beginning of the forest.  They walked under them.  They were silent under the faint moan of the leaves.

He pressed her in his arms and placed kisses on her eyelids.  Night was descending, the first stars were trembling among the branches.  In the damp grass sighed the frog’s flutes.  They went no farther.

When she took with him, in darkness, the road to the palace, the taste of kisses and of mint remained on her lips, and in her eyes was the image of her lover.  She smiled under the lindens at the nymphs who had seen the tears of her childhood.  The Swan lifted in the sky its cross of stars, and the moon mirrored its slender horn in the basin of the crown.  Insects in the grass uttered appeals to love.  At the last turn of the boxwood hedge, Therese and Jacques saw the triple black mass of the castle, and through the wide bay-windows of the first story distinguished moving forms in the red light.  The bell rang.

Therese exclaimed: 

“I have hardly time to dress for dinner.”

And she passed swiftly between the stone lions, leaving her lover under the impression of a fairy-tale vision.

In the drawing-room, after dinner, M. Berthier d’Eyzelles read the newspaper, and the Princess Seniavine played solitaire.  Therese sat, her eyes half closed over a book.

The Princess asked whether she found what she was reading amusing.

“I do not know.  I was reading and thinking.  Paul Vence is right:  ’We find only ourselves in books.’”

Through the hangings came from the billiard-room the voices of the players and the click of the balls.

“I have it!” exclaimed the Princess, throwing down the cards.

She had wagered a big sum on a horse which was running that day at the Chantilly races.