me Du Roy, passed half his time with his betrothed,
who treated him with a fraternal familiarity into which, however,
entered a real but hidden love, a species of desire concealed as a
weakness. She had decided that the marriage should be quite private,
only the witnesses being present, and that they should leave the same
evening for Rouen. They would go the next day to see the journalist's
parents, and remain with them some days. Duroy had striven to get her to
renounce this project, but not having been able to do so, had ended by
giving in to it.

So the tenth of May having come, the newly-married couple, having
considered the religious ceremony useless since they had not invited
anyone, returned to finish packing their boxes after a brief visit to
the Town Hall. They took, at the Saint Lazare terminus, the six o'clock
train, which bore them away towards Normandy. They had scarcely
exchanged twenty words up to the time that they found themselves alone
in the railway carriage. As soon as they felt themselves under way, they
looked at one another and began to laugh, to hide a certain feeling of
awkwardness which they did not want to manifest.

The train slowly passed through the long station of Batignolles, and
then crossed the mangy-looking plain extending from the fortifications
to the Seine. Duroy and his wife from time to time made a few idle
remarks, and then turned again towards the windows. When they crossed
the bridge of Asnieres, a feeling of greater liveliness was aroused in
them at the sight of the river covered with boats, fishermen, and
oarsmen. The sun, a bright May sun, shed its slanting rays upon the
craft and upon the smooth stream, which seemed motionless, without
current or eddy, checked, as it were, beneath the heat and brightness of
the declining day. A sailing boat in the middle of the river having
spread two large triangular sails of snowy canvas, wing and wing, to
catch the faintest puffs of wind, looked like an immense bird preparing
to take flight.

Duroy murmured: "I adore the neighborhood of Paris. I have memories of
dinners which I reckon among the pleasantest in my life."

"And the boats," she replied. "How nice it is to glide along at sunset."

Then they became silent, as though afraid to continue their outpourings
as to their past life, and remained so, already enjoying, perhaps, the
poesy of regret.

Duroy, seated face to face with his wife, took her hand and slowly
kissed it. "Wh