For two days he confined himself to the little bedroom which he occupied on the ground floor of the inn, the window of which looked out on a court-yard planted with apple trees. They were days of meditation and waiting. On the afternoon of the third he took a long ride through the plain of Normandy, that is to say to the places where it was possible that he would meet Josephine Balsamo. He thought it quite unlikely that the young woman, still badly shaken by her horrible experiences, would return to her abode in Paris. Alive, it was necessary that those who had murdered her should believe her dead. Moreover not only to avenge herself on them but also to reach before them the goal that they were seeking, it was necessary that she should not leave the field of battle. And that field of battle was the region which they call the Caux country; and in it all the ends of intrigue seemed to be united. In that case why should he not suddenly see her charming figure round the corner of this or that road, or on the outskirts of this or that wood? When he came back that evening he found on his dressing-table a bunch of spring flowers, periwinkles, narcissi, primroses, and wild strawberry blossoms. He asked the landlord how they came there. No one had been seen in his room. “It is she!” he thought, kissing the flowers that she had just gathered. For four consecutive days he posted himself under cover at the back of the court-yard. When he heard the sound of a footstep nearby, his heart jumped. Always he was disappointed. It caused him keen suffering. But at five o’clock on the fourth day, among the trees and bushes which covered the slope down the court-yard, he heard the rustling of a gown. Among them he saw a gown. He was on the point of darting forward, when he stopped short, overwhelmed by a sudden access of rage. He saw that it was Clarice d’Etigues. She had in her hand a bunch of flowers exactly like the other one. She crossed the court-yard lightly to the window of his bedroom and putting her hand through it set those flowers on his dressing-table. When she retraced her steps, he had a clear view of her face and was struck by its paleness. Her cheeks had lost their fresh coloring and her sunken eyes were witness to the bitterness of her grief and her hours of sleeplessness. “You will make me suffer bitterly,” she had said. She had not foreseen however, that those sufferings would begin so soon and that the very day which had seen their love at its zenith, would be a day of farewell and of inexplicable desertion. He remembered the prediction and raging at her for the injury he was doing her, furious at his disappointment, that it had been Clarice who had brought the flowers and not she for whom he was waiting, he suffered her to go away without a word.