never loved him, except in a dream, from which Paul Péronel had brutally
roused her.

But the young man, who still adored her, thought as he returned to Paris:

"Women are really very strange, complicated and inexplicable beings."




IN THE SPRING


When the first fine spring days come, and the earth awakes and assumes
its garment of verdure, when the perfumed warmth of the air blows on our
faces and fills our lungs, and even appears to penetrate to our heart, we
feel vague longings for undefined happiness, a wish to run, to walk at
random, to inhale the spring. As the winter had been very severe the year
before, this longing assumed an intoxicating feeling in May; it was like
a superabundance of sap.

Well, one morning on waking, I saw from my window the blue sky glowing in
the sun above the neighboring houses. The canaries hanging in the windows
were singing loudly, and so were the servants on every floor; a cheerful
noise rose up from the streets, and I went out, with my spirits as bright
as the day was, to go--I did not exactly know where. Everybody I met
seemed to be smiling; an air of happiness appeared to pervade everything,
in the warm light of returning spring. One might almost have said that a
breeze of love was blowing through the city, and the young women whom I
saw in the streets in their morning toilettes, in the depths of whose