Under the pretext of sticking a pin into her hair, she stood admiring herself in front of the glass, and at the same time, at the risk of offending her lover, who shouldn't have doubted the fact, she said, "You're the only person who has seen me like this, you and I...."
When Leonor went to sleep she knelt beside his adored body and pious words came to her lips: she had found the living god at last.
They had two days. They decided to finish the last hours at Paris and they returned to shut themselves up in a hotel in the Rue de Rivoli. Hortense was indefatigable.
"What shall we do to recapture this?" she asked.
The idea of taking a little house at Carentan seemed to them a good one. Mme. de la Mesangerie would always have the pretext of going to see her mother at Carquebut; her husband accompanied her there only once a year.
"Yes," said Leonor; "there's the time between two trains, one hour; then one misses one train. That makes two hours. Plenty of things can be done in two hours."
"Lovers learn the art of using every moment."
To Hortense it seemed as though she had begun a new life, her real life. She began consulting time-tables, fitting in her connections. Then she tossed the booklet aside, saying:
"Bah! It would be much simpler to get divorced."
"Your husband's virtue stands in the way, my dear."
She did not insist. Nevertheless, at this moment, she would have abandoned everything--family, children, house, fortune, honour--to follow Leonor and become the wife of a little architect with a still uncertain future. And then she would be the niece of Lanfranc, whose mother used to sell cakes to the children in the Place Notre-Dame at Saint-Lô! She had bought them from her when she was ten. Her aristocratic instinct revolted, but she looked at Leonor and reflected that the demigods were born of the peasant girls of Attica. She pursued her idea.
"Your mother must have been very beautiful."
She wished to go to the station alone, refused to be seen off.
"When shall I see you? You're not going to stay on in Paris?"
Leonor kept his word. He saw Hortense starting for the station, with red eyes, and an hour later he left in his turn.
Satiated, languid with that fatigue which is a blessing to the body and a joy for the lightened brain, Hortense was thinking. She was not sorry to be returning home. The journey--what better pretext could there be for the headaches which demand darkness and silence, or long morning hours in bed, for siestas?