He held her in his arms, and a thrill ran through her. Then he lifted her lovely head and commenced to kiss her, first on her eyes, those eyes whose sadness had so touched him as she passed him in her brougham--next on her cheeks, those cheeks whose ideal form had so charmed him from the first--finally on her sweet mouth, which gave his kisses back. What did he think of her? How could any idea shape itself in his mind, absorbed as it was by that union of the lips which is in itself complete and intoxicating possession? What delight, too, that embrace was to Suzanne! Through all the horrible complexities of her feminine diplomacy one sincere desire had grown stronger and stronger within her--that of meeting with a fresh and spontaneous, natural and thrilling passion. This passion she found in René's breath; it stirred the very depths of her soul and made her almost faint with emotion. Ah! this was youth, with its complete and absolute abandonment, expressing neither thought nor word; oblivious of all, except the immediate present; effacing all, except the fleeting sensation whose sweetness and whose very outlines seem to lie in a kiss. This woman, corrupted by the influence of a Parisian cynic of fifty and degraded by that horrible venality which has not the excuse of necessity--this Machiavelian courtesan, who had regulated her passion for René like a game of chess--tasted for one second that divine joy. The punishment of those who let calculation enter into their love lies in the remembrance of their calculation in the moment of ecstasy. Though intoxicated by the mad kisses she had given and received, Suzanne clearly saw that she could not abandon herself at once to her lover's arms. She therefore broke away from him and said, 'Let me go now that I have seen you and now that I know you are alive. I beg you to let me go. O René!'--she had never called him by this name before--'don't come near me!' 'Suzanne,' replied the poet, maddened by the burning nectar he had found on those lips--the certainty of being loved--'don't be afraid of me. When shall we have another hour like this to ourselves? Let me beg of you to stop. See,' he added, receding still farther from her, 'I will obey you. I obeyed you even when I found it so very hard. Ah! you believe me now!' he exclaimed, seeing that Suzanne's face no longer expressed such intense fear. 'Will you be very nice?' he continued, in that playful tone which takes so well with women, and which will make any one of them, be she a lady of high degree or a simple girl, call a man a 'darling.' 'Sit down there in that arm-chair, where I have so often sat at work, and then be nicer still, and try to look as though you were not on a visit.'