He made his way to Madame Magnotte directly after dinner.

"She is gone?" he exclaimed.

"But who, my friend? Ah, yes; it is of that poor Madame Meynell you
speak. How you are interested in her! No, she is not gone, poor woman.
She remains always. She has the air of a person who knows not her own
mind. Yet I am sure she thinks of going. To-day, for the first time, she
has been writing letters. Reine came to tell me she had seen her occupied
in her own room for the first time. It is not her habit to occupy
herself."

Gustave's heart gave a great jump. She was not gone; he might see her
again--if it were but a glimpse of her pale face looking out of the
diligence as it drove out of the Cour de Messageries. One look, one
glance; it would be something to carry in his heart all his life. All his
life! He looked forward and shuddered. What a dreary life it must needs
be! Cotenoir, Beaubocage, Madelon, the law; to plead, to read papers, to
study dry as dust books. He shrank appalled from the contemplation of
that dreary desert of existence--a life without her.

She had been writing letters--doubtless letters to her friends to
announce her return. Her departure must be very near at hand.

Gustave refused to go out that evening. His fellow-students were bent on
a night's pleasure at a dancing-garden then in vogue, where there would
be twinkling lamps and merry music under the May moon. The lamp-lit
parterres, the joyous waltzes, had no attractions for Gustave Lenoble. He
haunted the dull salon, dim and dreary in the twilight; for Madame