She had the wisdom to withdraw, and looking out of the window she asked:
"Where are we?"
"We are coming near our happiness," said Leonor.
They crossed the Oise, calm and gentle; then came the first houses of Compiègne and in a moment the station. They felt a strange emotion.
She did not wish to go to the Bell Hotel. A cab took them quickly to the Stag. Leonor was paying it off, but Hortense, wiser than her lover, kept it to do a round in the forest. She was pitiless and laughed, but with passion in her laughter; she changed her clothes and came down again.
They passed, without seeing it, before that elegant casket of stone which is the town hall. Following the fringe of the Great Park they reached the Tremble hills, where oaks and chestnut trees emerge, like the sails of ships, above the green ocean of bracken. They got down from the carriage with the intention of losing themselves for a moment in this bitter-smelling sea. The woman's white dress and fair hair left a luminous track as she advanced, for she was flying, like a laughing nymph before the hoarse laughter of the faun.
"It was about time," she said when the carriage picked them up to take them on to the Beaux-Monts.
"Time? what do you mean?"
"Yes," she went on, "I was too entranced.... We'll come back. Would you like to? We'll come back every year.... One needs a lot of virtue to resist the persuasions of the forest."
"Virtue," said Leonor, "consists in being able to defer one's pleasure or one's happiness.... I should like to see you in this scented sea, a nymph, a dryad, a siren...."