One afternoon in her rooms, as Muffat, whose advances she still adroitly resisted, was beseeching her with tremulous emotion to yield to his entreaties, she at length promised to be kind, but not in Paris, and to him, too, she named the middle of September.

Then on the twelfth she was seized by a desire to be off forthwith with Zoe as her sole companion.

It might be that Bordenave had got wind of her intentions and was about to discover some means of detaining her.

She was delighted at the notion of putting him in a fix, and she sent him a doctor's certificate.

When once the idea had entered her head of being the first to get to La Mignotte and of living there two days without anybody knowing anything about it, she rushed Zoe through the operation of packing and finally pushed her into a cab, where in a sudden burst of extreme contrition she kissed her and begged her pardon.