m to bed herself, but as she left the room he ran and
locked the door, explaining that he was shutting himself in so that
no one should come and disturb him. Then caressingly he shouted, "Good
night till tomorrow, little Mother!" and promised to take a nap. But
he did not go to bed again and with flushed cheeks and bright eyes
noiselessly put on his clothes. Then he sat on a chair and waited. When
the dinner bell rang he listened for Count Muffat, who was on his way to
the dining room, and ten minutes later, when he was certain that no
one would see him, he slipped from the window to the ground with the
assistance of a rain pipe. His bedroom was situated on the first floor
and looked out upon the rear of the house. He threw himself among some
bushes and got out of the park and then galloped across the fields with
empty stomach and heart beating with excitement. Night was closing in,
and a small fine rain was beginning to fall.

It was the very evening that Nana was due at La Mignotte. Ever since in
the preceding May Steiner had bought her this country place she had from
time to time been so filled with the desire of taking possession that
she had wept hot tears about, but on each of these occasions Bordenave
had refused to give her even the shortest leave and had deferred her
holiday till September on the plea that he did not intend putting an
understudy in her place, even for one evening, now that the exhibition
was on. Toward the close of August he spoke of October. Nana was
furious and declared that she would be at La Mignotte in the middle of
September. Nay, in order to dare Bordenave, she even invited a crowd
of guests in his very presence. One afternoon in her rooms, as Muffat,
whose advances she still adroitly resisted, was beseeching her with
tremulous emotion to yield to his entreaties, she at length promised
to be kind, but not in Paris, and to him, too, she named the middle
of September. Then on the twelfth she was seized by a desire to be off
forthwith with Zoe as her sole companion. It might be that Bordenave
had got wind of her intentions and was about to discover some means of
detaining her. She was delighted at the notion of putting him in a fix,
and she sent him a doctor's certificate. When once the idea had entered
her head of being the first to get to La Mignotte and of living there
two days without anybody knowing anything about it, she rushed Zoe
through the operation of packing and finally pushed he