When she awoke from her dream, she uttered a terrible cry. Captain Fracasse was kneeling by her, and thanking her, passionately, while he covered her disheveled hair with kisses, and she almost screamed out: "Go away! go away! go away!"
And as he did not understand what she meant, and tried to put his arm round her waist again, she writhed, as she stammered out:
"You are a wretch, and I hate you! Go away! go away!" And he got up in great surprise, took up his hat, and went.
The next day she returned to Val de Ciré, and her husband, who had not expected her for some time, blamed her for a freak.
"I could not live away from you any longer," she said.
He found her altered in character, and sadder than formerly, but when he said to her:
"What is the matter with you? You seem unhappy. What do you want?" she replied:
"Nothing. Happiness exists only in our dreams, in this world."
Avancelle came to see her the next summer, and she received him without any emotion, and without regret, for she suddenly perceived that she had 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: