At last, without any calculation, and by obeying the impulses of her own heart, she succeeded in finding a means which appeared almost infallible to her for coming to an explanation. She experienced an irresistible longing to visit the little abode in the Avenue Friedland, and she told herself that Hubert would, sooner or later, feel this longing like herself. Of inevitable necessity she must meet him face to face on one of these visits. Under the influence of this idea she began to pay long solitary visits to those ground floor rooms, whose every nook spoke to her of her lost happiness. The first time that she came there in this way, the hour which she spent among the furniture, was the occasion of such intolerable emotion that she was nearly relapsing into the extravagance of her first despair. She returned, nevertheless, and by degrees it became strangely sweet to her to accomplish this pilgrimage of love nearly every day. The doorkeeper lit the fire; she allowed the flame to illuminate the little drawing-room with a flickering light which struggled against the invasion of the twilight; she lay down upon the divan, to experience a sensation at once torturing and delicious, a blending of expectation, melancholy, and remembrance. Each time she was careful to first ask: "Has the gentleman been here?" and the negative reply would give her the hope that chance might cause the young man's visit to coincide with her own. She noticed, with beating heart, the slightest noise. All the objects around her which were not coloured by the blaze from the fireplace, were drowned in the shadow. The apartment was scented with the exhalations from the flowers, the cups and vases of which she used herself to trim, and she alternately dreaded and desired the entry of Hubert. Would he forgive her? Would he repel her? And finally she had to leave this refuge of her last hope, and she departed, her veil drawn down, her soul flooded by the same sadness that she used formerly to feel when Hubert's kisses were still fresh on her lips, at once comforted and terrified by this thought: "When shall I see him again? Will it be to-morrow?" One afternoon when stretched thus upon the divan and absorbed in her dreams, she seemed to hear the turning of a key in the lock of the outer door. She sat up suddenly with a wild throbbing of heart. Yes, the door was opening and closing. A step sounded in the ante-room. A hand was opening the second door. She fell back again upon the cushions of the divan, unable to endure the approach of what she had so greatly hoped for, and thus finding, through her very sincerity, the vanquished attitude which the most refined coquetry would have chosen and which was calculated to work most powerfully upon her lover,--if it were he. But what other could come, and did she not immediately recognise his step? Yes, it was indeed Hubert who was just coming in.