"By chance! Are you satisfied? You wished to see me, well, look at me."
"That is what I am doing," Hubert responded, "and with pleasure. I would never grow tired of it, Madame."
"I supposed it was quite the other way," Sixtine rejoined, "and that a secret or very inconsiderate presentiment informed you of my absences. How one blames one's friends! For the past three weeks, I left three times, in the evening, to come here, and naturally on the Wednesday of each week. Admit that it was odd for me to find your card, each Wednesday that I returned home."
"I am lost if you suppose I did it purposely," Hubert answered, "for every explanation is too simple to seem probable. I will give you the best one, although it may not perhaps be the true one. The first evening in which I passed a few minutes at your home was a Wednesday. A latent force must have led me to your door on the following Wednesdays, and this without any participation of my will. This periodical return, like the regular culmination of a feverish condition, is after all quite natural."
"These are the reasonings," Sixtine replied, "of an automaton who would be hard put to explain why he always plays the same tune on the flute, at the same hour. But you have come to the countess, instead of knocking at my door. Did no one wind you up this morning? On whom does this task devolve?"
"It would be yours, Madame, if you consented."
Each of them, ill at ease, felt the same desire to be silent and to go away. Sixtine, not yet calmed after the old ill-humor that had finally exploded, feared to hurt Hubert, feared to bleed him with too many prickings. Hubert, who feigned a sad politeness, endured suffocating agony. So he had been judged and Sixtine had pronounced sentence, with what aggravations for the unhappy man! Incapable, perhaps, of loving; certainly incapable of sharing his love. Would no mirage, then, be able to deceive him persistently, with sufficient certitude to give him courage to lead across the desert, towards the oasis, a phantom of love vivified by desire? She scoffed him and he surrendered; she fled and he watched her flee.
At the foot of the stairs which she had rapidly descended, remorse seized Sixtine by the flap of her cloak; she turned her head and waited for several seconds. Then, lifting her skirts, she hurried to the carriage which a watchful gamin, upon noticing her at the sidewalk, had motioned with mock gestures of obsequiousness. Profiting by the new indecision, remorse tried to seduce her with these insinuations:
"The air is very pleasant, the sky is clear, it would be nice to return on foot, chatting on the way. This poor Hubert would appreciate it, and I have really been a bit severe with him: he asks so little! But what can he be doing?"
She listened: no sound of a person issuing from the house. "What is this! You seem to be waiting for him! What an attitude for a woman!" the thin and whispering voice of feminine vanity breathed to her. She gave the driver her address and climbed into the carriage.