He bent over the shelves of the little book-case and read the titles of the works: _The War of 1870, prepared in the historical section of the German General Staff_; _The Retreat of Bourbaki_; _The Way to prepare our Revenge_; _The Crime of the Peace-at-any-Price Party_.... But one volume caught his attention more particularly. It was his own book on the idea of country. He turned the pages and, seeing that some of them were covered and scored with pencil-marks, he sat down and began to read: "It's as I thought," he muttered, presently. "How are he and I to understand each other henceforth? What common ground is there between us? I cannot expect him to accept my ideas. And how can I submit to his?" He went on reading and noticed comments the harshness of which distressed him beyond measure. Twenty minutes passed in this way, disturbed by no sound but that of the leaves which he turned as he read. And, suddenly, he felt two bare arms round his head, two cool, bare arms stroking his face. He tried to release himself. The two arms clasped him all the tighter. He made an abrupt effort and rose to his feet: "You!" he cried, stepping back. "You here, Suzanne!" A most attractive creature stood before him, at once smiling and bashful, in an attitude of provocation and fear, with hands clasped, then with arms again outstretched, beautiful, white, fragrant arms that showed below the short sleeves of her fine cambric blouse. Her fair hair was divided into two loose waves, whose rebellious curls played about at random. She had grey, almond-shaped eyes, half-veiled by their dark lashes; and her tiny teeth laughed at the edge of her red lips, lips so red that one would have thought--and been quite wrong in thinking--that they were painted. It was Suzanne Jorance, the daughter of Jorance the special commissary and a friend of Marthe, who knew her when she was quite a child at Luneville. Suzanne had spent four months, last winter, in Paris with the Philippe Morestals. "You!" he repeated. "You, Suzanne!" She replied, gaily: "Myself. Your father came to call on us at Saint-Elophe. And, as mine was out for a walk, he brought me back with him. I have just got out of the carriage. And here I am." He seized her by the wrists, in a fit of anger, and, in a hollow voice: "You had no business to be at Saint-Elophe. You wrote to Marthe that you were going away this morning. You ought not to have stayed. You know quite well that you ought not to have stayed." "Why?" she asked, quite confused. "Why? Because, at the end of your visit to Paris, you spoke to me in words which I was entitled to interpret ... which I took to mean ... And I would not have come, if you had not written that you were...." He broke off, embarrassed by the violence of his own outburst. The tears stood in Suzanne's eyes and her face had flushed so deep a red that her crimson lips seemed hardly red at all.