As often happens during the last days of October, it seemed as if the spring had returned; the night air had a May-like warmth, and the occasional cold gusts that passed by lent an additional zest to the atmosphere. Renée, with her head at the window, remained silent, looking at the crowd, the cafés and the restaurants, the interminable line of which stretched away before her. She had become quite serious, absorbed in the depth of the vague wishes which fill the reveries of women. This broad side-walk, which was swept by the dresses of harlots, and on which the men's boots rung with peculiar familiarity, the grey asphalte over which, it seemed to her, the gallop of facile love and pleasure was passing, awoke her slumbering desires, and made her forget the idiotic ball that she had just left to allow her to espy other delights of enhanced spiciness. At the windows of Brébant's private rooms she perceived women's shadows against the whiteness of the curtains. And Maxime thereupon told her a very indecent story of a deceived husband who had thus detected, on a curtain, the shadow of his wife embracing the shadow of a lover. She scarcely listened to him, but he, growing lively, ended by taking hold of her hands and teasing her by talking about that poor Monsieur de Mussy. As they drove back and again passed in front of Brébant's-- "Do you know," she said abruptly, "that Monsieur de Saffré invited me to supper this evening?" "Oh! you would have fared badly," replied Maxime laughing. "Saffré doesn't possess the least culinary imagination. He hasn't got beyond lobster salad." "No, no, he talked of oysters and cold partridge. But he thee-and-thou'd me, and that disturbed me." She stopped short, looked again at the Boulevard, and, after a moment's silence, added with a distressed air-- "The worst of it is that I'm awfully hungry." "What! you're hungry!" exclaimed the young man. "It's very simple, we'll sup together--Shall we?" He spoke quietly, but she refused at first, declaring that Céleste had prepared her a collation at home. However, Maxime, who did not wish to go to the Café Anglais, had stopped the cab at the corner of the Rue Le Pelletier, in front of the restaurant of the Café Riche; he had even alighted, and as his stepmother still hesitated. "After all," said he, "if you're afraid that I shall compromise you, say so. I'll get up beside the driver and take you back to your husband."