, the crowd, and the din, they walked on without paying any
heed to what was happening around them, without hearing anything, like
those who make their way across the fields over beds of dead leaves.

They talked about the days which they had formerly spent in each other's
society, the dinners at the time when _L'Art Industriel_ flourished,
Arnoux's fads, his habit of drawing up the ends of his collar and of
squeezing cosmetic over his moustache, and other matters of a more
intimate and serious character. What delight he experienced on the first
occasion when he heard her singing! How lovely she looked on her
feast-day at Saint-Cloud! He recalled to her memory the little garden at
Auteuil, evenings at the theatre, a chance meeting on the boulevard, and
some of her old servants, including the negress.

She was astonished at his vivid recollection of these things.

"Sometimes your words come back to me like a distant echo, like the
sound of a bell carried on by the wind, and when I read passages about
love in books, it seems to me that it is about you I am reading."

"All that people have found fault with as exaggerated in fiction you
have made me feel," said Frederick. "I can understand Werther, who felt
no disgust at his Charlotte for eating bread and butter."

"Poor, dear friend!"

She heaved a sigh; and, after a prolonged silence:

"No matter; we shall have loved each other truly!"

"And still without having ever belonged to each other!"

"This perhaps is all the better," she replied.

"No, no! What happiness we might have enjoyed!"

"Oh, I am sure of it with a love like yours!"

And it must have been very strong to endure after such a long
separation.

Frederick wished to know from her how she first discovered that he loved
her.

"It was when you kissed my wrist one evening between the glove and the
cuff. I said to myself, 'Ah! yes, he loves me--he loves me;'
nevertheless, I was afraid of being assured of it. So charming was your
reserve, that I felt myself the object, as it were, of an involuntary
and continuous homage."

He regretted nothing now. He was compensated for all he had suffered in
the past.

When they came back to the house, Madame Arnoux took off her bonnet. The
lamp, placed on a bracket, threw its light on her white hair. Frederick
felt as if some one had given him a blow in the middle of the chest.

In order to conceal from her his sense of disillusion, he flung himself
on the flo