Ah! how happy he felt at having desired to breathe the air of the Bois! It now seemed to him that he had only come there for her sake. Once more it appeared to him that some magnetic thought led to this deserted spot these two beings, who but yesterday had only exchanged commonplace remarks and who, in this sunbathed solitude, under these trees, in the fresh breeze of the departing winter, met again, impelled toward each other, drawn on by the same sympathy. "Do you know what I was thinking of?" she said, smiling graciously. "Yes, of what I was thinking as I cast the brown bread to those ducks? An idyll, is it not? Well! I was thinking that if one dared--a quick plunge into such a sheet of water--very pure--quite tempting--Eh! well! it would end all." Vaudrey did not reply. He looked at her stupidly, his glance betraying the utmost anxiety. "Oh! fear nothing," she said. "A whim! and besides, I can swim better than the swans, there is no danger." He had seized her hands instinctively and he experienced a singular delight in feeling the flesh of Marianne's wrists under his fingers. "You are feverish," he said. "I should be, at any rate." Her voice was still harsh, as if she were distressed. "The departure of--of that friend--has, then, caused you much suffering?" "Suffering? No. Vexation, yes--You have built many castles of cards in your life--Come! how stupid I am!" she said bitterly. "You still build many of them. Well! there it is, you see!" She had withdrawn her hands from Sulpice, and walked away slowly from the border of the lake, going toward the end of the path where her coachman awaited her, his eyes closed and his mouth open. "Where are you going on leaving the Bois?" asked Vaudrey. "I? I don't know." He had made a movement. "Oh! once more I tell you, don't be afraid," she said. "I want to live. Fear nothing, I will go home, _parbleu_." "Home?" "Or to my uncle's." "But, really, Monsieur le Ministre," she said, "you are taking upon yourself the affairs of Monsieur Jouvenet, your Prefect of Police. I know him well, and certainly he asks fewer questions than Your Excellency." "That, perhaps," said Vaudrey, with a smile, "is because he has less anxiety about you than I have." "Ah! bah!" said Marianne. She had by this time got close to her hackney coach and looked at the coachman for a moment. "Don't you think it would be very wrong to waken him?" she said. "Will you accompany me for a moment, Monsieur le Ministre?" Vaudrey paled slightly, divining under this question a seductive prospect. Marianne's gray eyes were never turned from him.