e had some very strange notions for the last two
months. You drag me to the seaside in spite of myself, when you have never
once had such a whim during all the forty-four years that we have been
married. You chose Fecamp, which is a very dull town, without consulting
me in the matter, and now you are seized with such a rage for walking, you
who hardly ever stir out on foot, that you want to take a country walk on
the hottest day of the year. Ask d'Apreval to go with you, as he is ready
to gratify all your whims. As for me, I am going back to have a nap."

Madame de Cadour turned to her old friend and said:

"Will you come with me, Monsieur d'Apreval?"

He bowed with a smile, and with all the gallantry of former years:

"I will go wherever you go," he replied.

"Very well, then, go and get a sunstroke," Monsieur de Cadour said; and he
went back to the Hotel des Bains to lie down for an hour or two.

As soon as they were alone, the old lady and her old companion set off,
and she said to him in a low voice, squeezing his hand:

"At last! at last!"

"You are mad," he said in a whisper. "I assure you that you are mad. Think
of the risk you are running. If that man--"

She started.

"Oh! Henri, do not say that man, when you are speaking of him."

"Very well," he said abruptly, "if our son guesses anything, if he has any
suspicions, he will have you, he will have us both in his power. You have
got on without seeing him for the last forty years. What is the matter
with you to-day?"

They had been going up the long street that leads from the sea to the
town, and now they turned to the right, to go to Etretat. The white road
stretched in front of them under a blaze of brilliant sunshine, so they
went on slowly in the burning heat. She had taken her old friend's arm,
and was looking straight in front of her, with a fixed and haunted gaze,
and at last she said:

"And so you have not seen him again, either?"

"No, never."

"Is it possible?"

"My dear friend, do not let us begin that discussion again. I have a wife
and children and you have a husband, so we both of us have much to fear
from other people's opinion."

She did not reply; she was thinking of her long past youth and of many sad
things that had occurred. How well she recalled all the details of their
early friendship, his smiles, the way he used to linger, in order to watch
her until she was indoors. What happy days they were, the only really
delicious