February was a warm, bright month, and although she now avoided being
alone with Monsieur Avancelle, she sometimes accepted his invitation to
drive round the lake in the _Bois de Boulogne_ with him, when it was
dusk.

On one of those evenings, it was so warm that it seemed as if the sap in
every tree and plant were rising. Their cab was going at a walk; it was
growing dusk, and they were sitting close together, holding each others'
hands, and she said to herself:

"It is all over, I am lost!" for she felt her desires rising in her
again, the imperious want for that supreme embrace, which she had
undergone in her dream. Every moment their lips sought each other, clung
together and separated, only to meet again immediately.

He did not venture to go into the house with her, but left her at her
door, more in love with him than ever, and half fainting.

Monsieur Paul Péronel was waiting for her in the little drawing-room,
without a light, and when he shook hands with her, he felt how feverish
she was. He began to talk in a low, tender voice, lulling her worn-out
mind with the charm of amorous words.

She listened to him without replying, for she was thinking of the other;
she thought she was listening to the other, and thought she felt him
leaning against her, in a kind of hallucination. She saw only him, and
did not remember that any other man existed on earth, and when her ears
trembled at those three syllables: "I love you," it was he, the other
man, who uttered them, who kissed her hands, who strained her to his
breast, like the other had done shortly before in the cab. It was he