Since their rupture, he, too, had often wished to come back to the little ground floor rooms, where the clock had struck for him so many sweet hours,--the clock over which Theresa used gracefully to throw the black lace of her second veil "in order to veil the time better," she said. Then he had not ventured. Fond memories made him timid. People are afraid, in renewing such, both of feeling too much and of feeling too little. This afternoon, however, was it the influence of the gloomy winter sky and his own bewitching melancholy? Was it the reading yesterday of one of Theresa's most charming notes, dated a year back on the very same day? Without thinking about it, Hubert had found himself on the way to the Avenue Friedland. To reach the latter he had mechanically pursued a network of winding streets, as he used of old in order to avoid spies. What need was there of such stratagems to-day? And the contrast had made his heart heavy. On his way he had to pass a telegraph office which formerly he used to enter after their meetings to prolong the voluptuousness of them by writing Theresa a note to surprise her just after she had reached home--a stifled echo, distant and so tender of the intoxicated sighs of that day! He saw the door of the office, its dark colour, its inscription, the opening of the box reserved for telegraph cards, and he nearly fainted. But he was already pursuing the pathway of the fatal Avenue, and he could see the house, the closed venetian blinds of the front rooms on the ground floor, and the entrance commanded by the gateway. How did he feel when the doorkeeper, after asking whether "the gentleman had had a good journey," added, in his hatefully obsequious tones: "The lady is there----?" He had not yet taken the key from his pocket when this news, less unexpected, perhaps, than he would acknowledge to himself, struck him like a full blow upon the breast. What was to be done? Dignity commanded him to depart immediately. But the lurking, deep desire which he had to see Theresa again suggested to him one of those sophisms, thanks to which we always find means to prefer with our reason what we most desire with our instinct. "If I do not go in," he said to himself, looking towards the lodge, "this odious individual will understand that we have quarrelled. He is capable of carrying his effrontery so far as to speak to Theresa of my interrupted visit. I owe it to her to spare her this humiliation, and besides, the matter of the rooms must be settled once for all. Shall I never be a man?" It was at this moment, after the lightning flash of this sudden reasoning, that he opened the door, being aware the while that there was one in the adjoining room who was being thrown into agitation from feet to hair by this simple noise. He had often warmed those slender feet with many kisses, and so often handled that long black hair! "If she has come, it is because she loves me still."