He continued to hold her, feeling considerably embarrassed.
“You should take a little infusion. You have been reading too much.”
“Yes, it upset me, when on closing the book I found myself alone. How kind you are, Monsieur Mouret! I might have hurt myself, had it not been for you.”
He looked for a chair on which to seat her.
“Shall I light a fire?”
“No, thank you, it would dirty your hands. I have noticed that you always wear gloves.”
And choking again at the idea, and suddenly feeling faint, she launched an awkward kiss into space as though in a dream, a kiss which slightly touched the young man’s ear.
Octave received this kiss with amazement. The young woman’s lips were as cold as ice. Then, when she had sank upon his breast in an abandonment of her whole frame, he was seized with a sudden desire, and sought to bear her into the inner room. But this brusque wooing roused Marie; her womanly instinct revolted; she struggled and called upon her mother, forgetting her husband, who was shortly to return; and her daughter who was sleeping near her.
“No, oh! no, no. It is wrong.”
But he kept ardently repeating: