Little by little he was losing his strength; this last obstacle drove him frantic. What! She still refused even at this price! In the distance he heard the clamour of his three thousand employees building up his immense fortune. And that idiotic million lying there! He suffered from it as from a sort of irony, he could have kicked it into the street.
"Go, then!" he cried at last in a flood of tears. "Go and join the man you love. That's the reason, isn't it? You warned me, I ought to have known it, and not have tormented you any further."
She stood there thunderstruck by the violence of this despair. Her own heart was bursting. And then, with the impetuosity of a child, she threw herself on his neck, sobbing also, and stammering: "Oh! Monsieur Mouret, it's you I love!"
A last murmur was rising from The Ladies' Paradise, the distant acclamation of a multitude. Madame Hédouin's portrait was still smiling, with its painted lips; Mouret had fallen on his table, on the million which he could no longer see. He did not quit Denise, but clasped her to his breast in a desperate embrace, telling her that she might now go, that she could spend a month at Valognes which would silence everybody, and that then he would go to fetch her himself, and bring her back, all-powerful, as his wedded wife.