But Renée brought with her, in sinning, all the ardour of a heart which has lost caste. She also had slided down the slope. Only she had not rolled as far as the bottom like a mass of inert flesh. Desire had been kindled within her when it was too late to resist it and when the fall had become inevitable. This fall abruptly appeared to her as one of the necessities of her boredom, as a rare extreme enjoyment which alone could rouse her tired senses, her wounded heart. It was during that autumnal promenade, in the twilight, when the Bois was falling asleep, that the vague idea of incest came to her, like a titillation which lent an unknown quiver to her skin; and in the evening, in the semi-intoxication of the dinner, this idea, lashed by jealousy, became precise, rose up ardently before her, amid the flames of the conservatory, as she watched Maxime and Louise. At that hour she desired sin, the sin which no one commits, the sin which would fill her empty life, and finally set her in that hell of which she was still afraid, just as she had been when she was a little girl. Then on the morrow, by a strange sentiment of remorse and lassitude, she no longer wished it. It seemed to her as if she had already sinned, that it was not so nice as she had fancied, and that it would really be too dirty. The crisis was bound to be fatal, to come from herself, apart from those two beings, those comrades who were destined to deceive each other one fine evening, and to couple themselves, thinking they were merely exchanging a hand-shake. However, after this stupid fall, she returned to her dream of a nameless pleasure, and then she took Maxime in her arms again, inquisitive about him, inquisitive as to the cruel delights of a love which she regarded as a crime. Her volition accepted incest, required it, decided upon tasting it to the end, even to remorse should that ever come. She was active, and conscious of her doings. She loved with the fury of a great fashionable lady, with the nervous prejudices she possessed as an offspring of the middle classes, with all the struggles, joys, and disgusts of a woman who drowns herself in self-disdain.