haunted her in her dreams, and she saw him
as he really was; gentle, delicate in all his actions, humble, but
passionately in love, and she awoke full of those dreams, fancying that
she still heard him, and felt him near her, until one night (most likely
she was feverish), she saw herself alone with him in a small wood, where
they were both of them sitting on the grass. He was saying charming
things to her, while he pressed and kissed her hands.

She could feel the warmth of his skin and of his breath, and she was
stroking his hair, in a very natural manner.

We are quite different in our dreams to what we are in real life. She
felt full of love for him, full of calm and deep love, and was happy in
stroking his forehead and in holding him against her. Gradually he put
his arms round her, kissed her eyes and her cheeks without her attempting
to get away from him; their lips met, and she yielded.

When she saw him again, unconscious of the agitation that he had caused
her, she felt that she grew red, and while he was telling her of his
love, she was continually recalling to mind their previous meeting,
without being able to get rid of the recollection.

She loved him, loved him with refined tenderness, which arose chiefly
from the remembrance of her dream, although she dreaded the
accomplishment of the desires which had arisen in her mind.

At last, he perceived it, and then she told him everything, even to the
dread of his kisses, and she made him swear that he would respect her,
and he did so. They spent long hours of transcendental love together,
during which their souls alone embraced, and when they separated, they
were enervated, weak and feverish.

Sometimes their lips met, and with closed eyes they reveled in that long,
yet chaste caress; she felt, however, that she could not resist much
longer, and as she did not wish to yield, she wrote and told her husband
that she wanted to come to him, and to return to her tranquil, solitary
life. But in reply, he wrote her a very kind letter, and strongly advised
her not to return in the middle of the winter, and so expose herself to a
sudden change of climate, and to the icy mists of the valley, and she was
thunderstruck, and angry with that confiding man, who did not guess, who
did not understand, the struggles of her heart.

February was a warm, bright month, and although she now avoided being
alone with Monsieur Avancelle, she sometimes accepted his invitation to