In the cab which brought her to the Avenue Friedland on the day following this night of agony, Theresa de Sauve, took none of the precautions that were habitual with her, such as changing vehicles on the way, tying a double veil across her face, or peeping at the street corners through the little pane of glass behind, to see whether anything of a suspicious nature was accompanying her clandestine drive. All these timorous secrecies of forbidden love used formerly to please her delightfully on Hubert's account. Was not the continuance of their intrigue secured by securing its mysteriousness? There was little question of that now. In her ungloved hand she held a little gold key hanging to the chain of a bracelet--a pretty trinket of tenderness which her lover had had contrived for her. This key, which never left her wrist, served to open the door of the ground floor lent by Emmanuel Deroy, the worshipped refuge of the few days during which she had really lived her life--a dream-oasis to which the unhappy woman was now going as to a cemetery. There was likely to be a storm in the course of the day, for the atmosphere of the autumn morning was heavy, and completely charged with a sort of electric torpor, the influence of which irritated still further her weak, womanish nerves. She did not tell the cabman, as she always used to do, to drive into the entry,--for the house had two exits, and the large open gateway allowed her to be brought in the cab to the very door of the apartments without being seen by the porter, whose discretion was, moreover, guaranteed by the profits resulting from the amour of his tenant's friend. She had fastened her eyes the whole way upon the slightest details in the streets successively passed through; she knew them well, from the signs of the shops to the look of the houses, because these images were associated with the happiest memories of her too short romance. She uttered to them in thought the same mournful farewell as to her happiness.