"When I think," said Durtal to himself the next morning, "that in bed, at the moment when the most pertinacious will succumbs, I held firm and refused to yield to the instances of Hyacinthe wishing to establish a footing here, and that after the carnal decline, at that instant when annihilated man recovers--alas!--his reason, I supplicated her, myself, to continue her visits, why, I simply cannot understand myself.

Deep down, I have not got over my firm resolution of breaking with her, but I could not dismiss her like a cocotte.

And," to justify his inconsistency, "I hoped to get some information about the canon.

Oh, on that subject I am not through with her.

She's got to make up her mind to speak out and quit answering me by monosyllables and guarded phrases as she did yesterday.
"Indeed, what can she have been up to with that abbe who was her confessor and who, by her own admission, launched her into incubacy?
She has been his mistress, that is certain.