,
and it was very nice for a week, but nowadays I must look after my own
affairs. Just think it over a bit. Now your brother's a man; what I'm
saying doesn't apply to him. Oh, please do me a favor; it's no good
telling him all this. He needn't know where I'm going. I always let out
too much when I'm in a rage."

She began laughing. Then taking him in her arms and kissing him on the
forehead:

"Good-by, baby," she said; "it's over, quite over between us; d'you
understand? And now I'm off!"

And she left him, and he stood in the middle of the drawing room. Her
last words rang like the knell of a tocsin in his ears: "It's over,
quite over!" And he thought the ground was opening beneath his feet.
There was a void in his brain from which the man awaiting Nana had
disappeared. Philippe alone remained there in the young woman's bare
embrace forever and ever. She did not deny it: she loved him, since she
wanted to spare him the pain of her infidelity. It was over, quite over.
He breathed heavily and gazed round the room, suffocating beneath
a crushing weight. Memories kept recurring to him one after the
other--memories of merry nights at La Mignotte, of amorous hours during
which he had fancied himself her child, of pleasures stolen in this very
room. And now these things would never, never recur! He was too small;
he had not grown up quickly enough; Philippe was supplanting him because
he was a bearded man. So then this was the end; he could not go on
living. His vicious passion had become transformed into an infinite
tenderness, a sensual adoration, in which his whole being was merged.
Then, too, how was he to forget it all if his brother remained--his
brother, blood of his blood, a second self, whose enjoyment drove him
mad with jealousy? It was the end of all things; he wanted to die.

All the doors remained open, as the servants noisily scattered over the
house after seeing Madame make her exit on foot. Downstairs on the bench
in the hall the baker was laughing with Charles and Francois. Zoe
came running across the drawing room and seemed surprised at sight
of Georges. She asked him if he were waiting for Madame. Yes, he was
waiting for her; he had for-gotten to give her an answer to a question.
And when he was alone he set to work and searched. Finding nothing else
to suit his purpose, he took up in the dressing room a pair of very
sharply pointed scissors with which Nana had a mania for ceaselessly
trimming herself,