She threw away, without breaking it, the piece of bread that was left,
brushed her gloved fingers, and, turning toward the minister, said with
a smile that would make the flesh creep:

"Very sad. Oh! what would you have? The black butterflies, you know, the
blue devils."

He saw her again, just as she had appeared before him yesterday, with
arms and shoulders bare, lovely and seductive, and now, with her
shoulders hidden under her cloak, her face half-veiled and quite pale,
he thought her still more disquietingly charming. Moreover, the
strangeness of the situation, the chance meeting, imparted something of
mystery to their conversation and the attraction of an assignation.

Ah! how happy he felt at having desired to breathe the air of the Bois!
It now seemed to him that he had only come there for her sake. Once more
it appeared to him that some magnetic thought led to this deserted spot
these two beings, who but yesterday had only exchanged commonplace
remarks and who, in this sunbathed solitude, under these trees, in the
fresh breeze of the departing winter, met again, impelled toward each
other, drawn on by the same sympathy.

"Do you know what I was thinking of?" she said, smiling graciously.
"Yes, of what I was thinking as I cast the brown bread to those ducks?
An idyll, is it not? Well! I was thinking that if one dared--a quick
plunge into such a sheet of water--very pure--quite tempting--Eh! well!
it would end all."

Vaudrey did not reply. He looked at her stupidly, his glance betraying
the utmost anxiety.

"Oh! fear nothing," she said. "A whim! and besides, I can swim better
than the swans, there is no danger."

He had seized her hands instinctively and he experienced a singular
delight in feeling the flesh of Marianne's wrists under his fingers.

"You are feverish," he said.

"I should be, at any rate."

Her voice was still harsh, as if she were distressed.

"The departure of--of that friend--has, then, caused you much
suffering?"

"Suffering? No. Vexation, yes--You have built many castles of cards in
your life--Come! how stupid I am!" she said bitterly. "You still build
many of them. Well! there it is, you see!"

She had withdrawn her hands from Sulpice, and walked away slowly from
the border of the lake, going toward the end of the path where her
coachman awaited her, his eyes closed and his mouth open.

"Where are you going on leaving the Bois?" asked Vaudrey.

"I? I don't know."

He h