said: "It only
remains for me to thank you for this delightful day...." But she
interrupted him: "What do you do at this time, every night?" "Why ...
why ... I go home." She began to laugh, a little tremulous laugh. "Very
well, Monsieur ... let us go to your rooms."

They did not say anything more. She shivered occasionally, from head to
foot, feeling inclined to stay, and inclined to run away, but with a
fixed determination, after all, to see it out to the end. She was so
excited that she had to hold onto the baluster as she went upstairs, and
he came up behind her, with a wax match in his hand.

As soon as they were in the room, she undressed herself quickly, and
retired without saying a word, and then she waited for him, cowering
against the wall. But she was as simple as it was possible for a
provincial lawyer's wife to be, and he was more exacting than a pascha
with three tails, and so they did not at all understand each other. At
last, however, he went to sleep, and the night passed, and the silence
was only disturbed by the _tick-tack_ of the clock, and she, lying
motionless, thought of her conjugal nights; and by the light of the
Chinese lantern, she looked, nearly heart-broken, at the little fat man
lying on his back, whose round stomach raised up the bed-clothes like a
balloon filled with gas. He snored with the noise of a wheezy organ
pipe, with prolonged snorts and comic chokings. His few hairs profited
by his sleep, to stand up in a very strange way, as if they were tired
of having been fastened for so long to that pate, whose bareness they
were trying to cover, and a small stream of saliva was running out of
one corner of his half-open mouth.

At last the daylight appeared through the drawn blinds; so she got up
and dressed herself without making any noise, and she had already half
opened the door, when she made the lock creak, and he woke up and rubbed
his eyes. He was some moments before he quite came to himself, and then,
when he remembered all that had happened, he said: "What! Are you going
already?" She remained standing, in some confusion, and then she said,
in a hesitating voice: "Yes, of course; it is morning..."

Then he sat up, and said: "Look here, I have something to ask you, in my
turn." And as she did not reply, he went on: "You have surprised me most
confoundedly since yesterday. Be open, and tell me why you did it all,
for upon my word I cannot understand it in the least." She went clo