She calmly held out her cheek to him, which he kissed as he would have kissed that of a sister.
He continued: “The first time I saw you—you remember the dinner Forestier invited me to—I thought, ‘Hang it all, if I could only find a wife like that.’ Well, it’s done. I have one.”
She said, in a low tone: “That is very nice,” and looked him straight in the face, shrewdly, and with smiling eyes.
He reflected, “I am too cold. I am stupid. I ought to get along quicker than this,” and asked: “How did you make Forestier’s acquaintance?”
She replied, with provoking archness: “Are we going to Rouen to talk about him?”
He reddened, saying: “I am a fool. But you frighten me a great deal.”
She was delighted, saying: “I—impossible! How is it?”
He had seated himself close beside her. She suddenly exclaimed: “Oh! a stag.”
The train was passing through the forest of Saint Germaine, and she had seen a frightened deer clear one of the paths at a bound. Duroy, leaning forward as she looked out of the open window, printed a long kiss, a lover’s kiss, among the hair on her neck. She remained still for a few seconds, and then, raising her head, said: “You are tickling me. Leave off.”
But he would not go away, but kept on pressing his curly moustache against her white skin in a long and thrilling caress.
She shook herself, saying: “Do leave off.”