Still she had had a romance in her commonplace fashionable life. One day, at sunset, after going on foot to see her father, who did not like to hear the noise of carriages at his door, she noticed, while passing along the Quai Saint-Paul on her way home, that she was being followed by a young man. It was warm and the daylight was waning with amorous softness. She, who was usually only followed on horseback in the pathways of the Bois de Boulogne, found the adventure spicy and was flattered by it as by a new homage, somewhat brutal no doubt, but the very coarseness of which titillated her. Instead of returning home she took the Rue du Temple and promenaded her gallant along the Boulevards. The man however grew bolder and became so pressing that Renée, somewhat intimidated, lost her head, followed the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, and took refuge in the shop kept by her husband's sister. The man came in behind her. Madame Sidonie smiled, seemed to understand, and left them alone. And when Renée wished to follow her sister-in-law the stranger retained her, spoke to her with feeling politeness and won her forgiveness. He was a clerk called Georges whose surname she never asked. She went to see him twice, going in by the shop while he arrived by the Rue Papillon. This chance love affair, found and accepted in the street, proved one of her keenest pleasures. She always thought of it with a little shame, but with a singular smile of regret. Madame Sidonie's profit in the affair was that she at last became the accomplice of her brother's second wife, a part which she had been anxious to play ever since the wedding-day.