there was nothing
for her at the postoffice, trembling and joyful when she received through
the small window a letter wherein she recognized the large handwriting of
her beloved, she devoured her reminiscences, her desires, and her hopes.
Thus the hours passed quickly.

The morning of the day when he was to arrive seemed to her to be odiously
long. She was at the station before the train arrived. A delay had been
signalled. It weighed heavily upon her. Optimist in her projects, and
placing by force, like her father, faith on the side of her will, that
delay which she had not foreseen seemed to her to be treason. The gray
light, which the three-quarters of an hour filtered through the
window-panes of the station, fell on her like the rays of an immense
hour-glass which measured for her the minutes of happiness lost. She was
lamenting her fate, when, in the red light of the sun, she saw the
locomotive of the express stop, monstrous and docile, on the quay, and,
in the crowd of travellers coming out of the carriages, Jacques
approached her. He was looking at her with that sort of sombre and
violent joy which she had often observed in him. He said:

"At last, here you are. I feared to die before seeing you again. You do
not know, I did not know myself, what torture it is to live a week away
from you. I have returned to the little pavilion of the Via Alfieri. In
the room you know, in front of the old pastel, I have wept for love and
rage."

She looked at him tenderly.

"And I, do you not think that I called you, that I wanted you, that when
alone I extended my arms toward you? I had hidden your letters in the
chiffonier where my jewels are. I read them at night: it was delicious,
but it was imprudent. Your letters were yourself--too much and not
enough."

They traversed the court where fiacres rolled away loaded with boxes. She
asked whether they were to take a carriage.

He made no answer. He seemed not to hear. She said:

"I went to see your house; I did not dare go in. I looked through the
grille and saw windows hidden in rose-bushes in the rear of a yard,
behind a tree, and I said: 'It is there!' I never have been so moved."

He was not listening to her nor looking at her. He walked quickly with
her along the paved street, and through a narrow stairway reached a
deserted street near the station. There, between wood and coal yards, was
a hotel with a restaurant on the first floor and tables on the sidewalk.
Und