placed her body between those bodies that were groping for
each other. She glided between the hands outstretched to touch each
other; she glided between the lips that were put forth in search of
other proffered lips. But of all this that she prevented she felt the
breath and the shock. She felt the pressure of the hands she held apart,
the caresses that she caught on the wing and that missed their mark and
went astray upon her. The hot breath of the kisses she intercepted blew
upon her cheek. Involuntarily, and with a feeling of horror, she became
a party to the embracing, she was infected with the desires aroused by
this constant friction and struggling, which diminished day by day the
young man's restraint and respect for her person.

It happened one day that she was less strong against herself than she
had previously been. On that occasion she did not elude his advances so
abruptly as usual. Jupillon felt that she stopped short. Germinie felt
it even more keenly than he; but she was at the end of her efforts,
exhausted with the torture she had undergone. The love which, coming
from another, she had turned aside from Jupillon, had slowly taken full
possession of her own heart. Now it was firmly rooted there, and,
bleeding with jealousy, she found that she was incapable of resistance,
weak and fainting, like a person fatally wounded, in presence of the joy
that had come to her.

She repelled the young man's audacious attempts, however, without a
word. She did not dream of belonging to him otherwise than as a friend,
or giving way farther than she had done. She lived upon the thought of
love, believing that she could live upon it always. And in the ecstatic
exaltation of her thoughts, she put aside all memory of her fall, and
repressed her desires. She remained shuddering and pure, lost and
suspended in abysses of affection, neither enjoying nor wishing for
aught from the lover but a caress, as if her heart were made only for
the joy of kissing.

X

This happy though unsatisfied love produced a strange physiological
phenomenon in Germinie's physical being. One would have said that the
passion that was alive within her renewed and transformed her lymphatic
temperament. She did not seem, as before, to extract her life, drop by
drop, from a penurious spring: it flowed through her arteries in a full,
generous stream; she felt the tingling sensation of rich blood over her
whole body. She seemed to be filled with