d and his
voice, Mlle. Lucienne had disappeared, and he could hear her bolting
her door, and striking a match against the wall.

He might also have thought that he was awaking from a dream, had he
not had, to attest the reality, the vague perfume which filled his
room, and the light shawl, which Mlle. Lucienne wore as she came in,
and which she had forgotten, on a chair.

The night was almost ended: six o'clock had just struck. Still he
did not feel in the least sleepy. His head was heavy, his temples
throbbing, his eyes smarting. Opening his window, he leaned out to
breathe the morning air. The day was dawning pale and cold. A
furtive and livid light glanced along the damp walls of the narrow
court of the Hotel des Folies, as at the bottom of a well. Already
arose those confused noises which announce the waking of Paris, and
above which can be heard the sonorous rolling of the milkmen's carts,
the loud slamming of doors, and the sharp sound of hurrying steps on
the hard pavement.

But soon Maxence felt a chill coming over him. He closed the window,
threw some wood in the chimney, and stretched himself on his chair,
his feet towards the fire. It was a most serious event which had
just occurred in his existence; and, as much as he could, he
endeavored to measure its bearings, and to calculate its consequences
in the future.

He kept thinking of the story of that strange girl, her haughty
frankness when unrolling certain phases of her life, of her
wonderful impassibility, and of the implacable contempt for humanity
which her every word betrayed. Where had she learned that dignity,
so simple and so noble, that measured speech, that admirable respect
of herself, which had enabled her to pass through so much filth
without receiving a stain?

"What a woman!" he thought.

Before knowing her, he loved her. Now he was convulsed by one of
those exclusive passions which master the whole being. Already he
felt himself so much under the charm, subjugated, dominated,
fascinated; he understood so well that he was going to cease being
his own master; that his free will was about escaping from him;
that he would be in Mlle. Lucienne's hands like wax under the
modeler's fingers; he saw himself so thoroughly at the discretion
of an energy superior to his own, that he was almost frightened.

"It's my whole future that I am going to risk," he thought.

And there was no middle path. Either he must fly at once, without