"I assure you that, with you, I am another woman. It's the solemn truth that you are the first to possess me. It's queer, all the same. Directly I set eyes on you I wanted you. Quite suddenly I felt I must have you. I felt it somehow. What? I should find it very hard to say. Oh, I didn't stop to think. With your conventional, stiff, frigid manners, and your appearance, like a curly-haired little wolf, you pleased me, that was all! And now I could not do without you. No, indeed, I couldn't." He assured her that on her surrender he had been deliciously surprised; he said all sorts of pretty, caressing things, all of which had been said before. Taking his head in her hands, she said: "You have really the teeth of a wolf. I think it was your teeth that made me want you the first day. Bite me!" He pressed her to his bosom, and felt her firm supple body respond to his embrace. Suddenly she released herself: "Don't you hear the gravel creaking?" "No." "Listen: I can hear a sound of footsteps on the path." Sitting upright, her body bent forward, she strained her ears. He was disappointed, excited, irritated, and perhaps his self-esteem was slightly hurt. "What has come over you? It's absurd." She cried very sharply: "Do hold your tongue!" She was listening intently to a slight sound, near at hand, as of breaking branches. Suddenly she leapt from the bed with such instinctive agility, with a movement so like the rapid spring of a young animal, that Ligny, although by no means of a literary turn of mind, thought of the cat metamorphosed into a woman. "Are you crazy? Where are you going?" Raising a corner of the curtain, she wiped the moisture from the corner of a pane, and peered out through the window. She saw nothing but the night. The noise had ceased altogether. During this time, Ligny, lying moodily against the wall, was grumbling: "As you will, but, if you catch a cold, so much the worse for you!" She glided back into bed. At first he remained somewhat resentful; but she wrapped him about with the delicious freshness of her body. When they came to themselves they were surprised to see by one of their watches that it was seven o'clock. Ligny lit the lamp, a paraffin lamp, supported on a column, with a cut-glass container inside which the wick was curled up like a tape-worm. Felicie was very quick in dressing herself. They had to descend one floor by a wooden staircase, dark and narrow. He went ahead, carrying the lamp, and halted in the passage. "You go out, darling, before I put the lamp out." She opened the door, and immediately recoiled with a loud shriek. She had seen Chevalier standing on the outer steps, with arms extended, tall, black, erect as a crucifix. His hand grasped a revolver. The glint of the weapon was not perceptible; nevertheless she saw it quite distinctly. "What's the matter?" demanded Ligny, who was turning down the wick of the lamp.