, would
perhaps reappear.

"No," a secret voice whispered to Marianne. "The truth is that he is
afraid of you! It is you, you, whom he flees from."

To renounce everything was enough to banish all patience. Yesterday, on
leaving Rosas, she believed herself to be withdrawn forever from the
wretched Bohemian life she had so painfully endured. To-day, she felt
herself sunk deeper in its mire. Too much mire and misery at last!
However, if she only had courage!

It was while looking at the great blue lake, the snowy swans, the
gleaming barks, that she dreamed, as she had just told Vaudrey, of
making an end of all. Madness, worse than that, stupidity! One does not
kill one's self at her age; one does not make of beauty a valueless
draft. In order to occupy herself, she had bought some brown bread,
which she mechanically threw to the ducks, in order to draw her out of
herself. It was then that Sulpice saw her.

"Assuredly," she thought, as she left the minister, "those who despair
are idiots!"

In fact, it seemed that chance, as her fingers had cast mouthfuls of
bread to the hungry bills, had thrown Vaudrey to her in place of Rosas.

A minister! that young man who smiled on her just now in the alleys of
the Bois and drew near her with trembling breath was a minister. A
minister as popular as Vaudrey was a power, and since Marianne, weary of
seeking love, was pursuing an actuality quite as difficult to
obtain--riches, Sulpice unquestionably was not to be despised.

"As a last resource, one might find worse," thought Marianne, as she
entered her home.

She had not, moreover, hesitated long. She was not in the mood for
prolonged anger. She was at an age when prompt decisions must be made on
every occasion that life, with its harsh spurs, proposed a problem or
furnished an opportunity. On the way between the Lake and Rue de
Navarin, Marianne had formed her plan. Since she had to reply to
Vaudrey, she would write him. She felt an ardent desire to avenge
herself for Rosas's treatment, as if he ought to suffer therefor, as if
he were about to know that Sulpice loved her.

Had she found the duke awaiting her, as she entered the house, she would
have been quite capable of lashing his face with a whip, while making
the lying confession:

"Ah! you here? It is too late! I love Monsieur Vaudrey."

She would, moreover, never know any but gloomy feelings arising from her
poverty in that house. The thought suggested itself to he