She did not insist. Nevertheless, at this moment, she would have abandoned everything--family, children, house, fortune, honour--to follow Leonor and become the wife of a little architect with a still uncertain future. And then she would be the niece of Lanfranc, whose mother used to sell cakes to the children in the Place Notre-Dame at Saint-Lô! She had bought them from her when she was ten. Her aristocratic instinct revolted, but she looked at Leonor and reflected that the demigods were born of the peasant girls of Attica. She pursued her idea. "Your mother must have been very beautiful." "Who told you so? It's quite true." She wished to go to the station alone, refused to be seen off. "When shall I see you? You're not going to stay on in Paris?" "No." Leonor kept his word. He saw Hortense starting for the station, with red eyes, and an hour later he left in his turn. CHAPTER XII Satiated, languid with that fatigue which is a blessing to the body and a joy for the lightened brain, Hortense was thinking. She was not sorry to be returning home. The journey--what better pretext could there be for the headaches which demand darkness and silence, or long morning hours in bed, for siestas? "I must sleep off my love, as drunkards say that one must sleep off one's wine. But what a horrid comparison! I shall dream deliciously. My lover, I have only to shut my eyes to see you, happy in my happiness, and to feel your dear caresses. Tell me, are you pleased with me? What must I do to be still more your mistress? Yes, I ought not to have gone away; I ought to have stayed with you, at your orders, forgetting everything that is not you. You should have run and overtaken me, kept me, locked me up! But listen, I shall go and see you every week. Oh! how gladly I shall tell lies! How pleasant it will be for me to look M. de la Mesangerie in the face while he reads around my eyes only the innocent fatigue of a long journey!" The delirium of the senses invaded all her life. She scarcely remembered the events that had preceded her trip to Compiègne. She had spent more than an hour wondering if there were round about St. Lô, or in the forest of Cerisy, any of these oceans of bracken. She could not think of any; but she would look.... M. de la Mesangerie, who was waiting for her at the station, thought she looked tired. She was not tired; she was in a state of hallucination. However, she had enough presence of mind to reproach her husband for having deserted her. Thus, she hadn't dare fix definitely on the furniture which they had almost chosen together; she had spent two days of indecision in the Louvre stores, tiring every one, including herself. "You must go back there by yourself," she said, "it will be your punishment." M. de la Mesangerie was flattered. But there was another misfortune: the toys for the children had been forgotten. Hortense felt rather ashamed when she confessed this; she also inwardly regretted such an oversight.