"Yes, after a little, when you are more yourself. In the meantime, resign yourself to a little suffering once in a while, for my sake. Since you have to suffer in any event, isn't it better to endure it at my side rather than somewhere far from me?" Her smile seemed to say to him: "Why can you not have confidence in me?" and as she eyed him there, his whole frame quivering with passion, she experienced through every fiber of her being a feeling of satisfied well-being that made her happy in her way, in the way that the bird of prey is happy when he sees his quarry lying fascinated beneath him and awaiting the fatal talons. "When do you return to Paris?" she asked. "Why--to-morrow!" "To-morrow be it. You will come and dine with me?" "Yes, Madame." "And now I must be going," said she, looking at the watch set in the handle of her parasol. "Oh! why so soon?" "Because I must catch the five o'clock train. I have company to dinner to-day, several persons: the Princess de Malten, Bernhaus, Lamarthe, Massival, De Maltry, and a stranger, M. de Charlaine, the explorer, who is just back from upper Cambodia, after a wonderful journey. He is all the talk just now." Mariolle's spirits fell; it hurt him to hear these names mentioned one after the other, as if he had been stung by so many wasps. They were poison to him. "Will you go now?" he said, "and we can drive through the forest and see something of it." "I shall be very glad to. First give me a cup of tea and some toast." When the tea was served, Elisabeth was not to be found. The cook said that she had gone out to make some purchases. This did not surprise Mme. de Burne, for what had she to fear now from this servant? Then they got into the landau that was standing before the door, and Mariolle made the coachman take them to the station by a roundabout way which took them past the Gorge-aux-Loups. As they rolled along beneath the shade of the great trees where the nightingales were singing, she was seized by the ineffable sensation that the mysterious and all-powerful charm of nature impresses on the heart of man. "_Dieu!_" she said, "how beautiful it is, how calm and restful!" He accompanied her to the station, and as they were about to part she said to him: "I shall see you to-morrow at eight o'clock, then?" "To-morrow at eight o'clock, Madame." She, radiant with happiness, went her way, and he returned to his house in the landau, happy and contented, but uneasy withal, for he knew that this was not the end. Why should he resist? He felt that he could not. She held him by a charm that he could not understand, that was stronger than all. Flight would not deliver him, would not sever him from her, but would be an intolerable privation, while if he could only succeed in showing a little resignation, he would obtain from her at least as much as she had promised, for she was a woman who always kept her word.