"
She began laughing. Then taking him in her arms and kissing him on the
forehead:
"Good-by, baby," she said; "it's over, quite over between us; d'you
understand? And now I'm off!"
And she left him, and he stood in the middle of the drawing room. Her
last words rang like the knell of a tocsin in his ears: "It's over,
quite over!" And he thought the ground was opening beneath his feet.
There was a void in his brain from which the man awaiting Nana had
disappeared. Philippe alone remained there in the young woman's bare
embrace forever and ever. She did not deny it: she loved him, since she
wanted to spare him the pain of her infidelity. It was over, quite over.
He breathed heavily and gazed round the room, suffocating beneath
a crushing weight. Memories kept recurring to him one after the
other--memories of merry nights at La Mignotte, of amorous hours during
which he had fancied himself her child, of pleasures stolen in this very
room. And now these things would never, never recur! He was too small;
he had not grown up quickly enough; Philippe was supplanting him because
he was a bearded man. So then this was the end; he could not go on
living. His vicious passion had become transformed into an infinite
tenderness, a sensual adoration, in which his whole being was merged.
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