When I reached home I was in a state of mad gaiety.

As I thought of how the barriers which my imagination had placed between Marguerite and myself had disappeared, of how she was now mine; of the place I now had in her thoughts, of the key to her room which I had in my pocket, and of my right to use this key, I was satisfied with life, proud of myself, and I loved God because he had let such things be.
One day a young man is passing in the street, he brushes against a woman, looks at her, turns, goes on his way.

He does not know the woman, and she has pleasures, griefs, loves, in which he has no part.

He does not exist for her, and perhaps, if he spoke to her, she would only laugh at him, as Marguerite had laughed at me.

Weeks, months, years pass, and all at once, when they have each followed their fate along a different path, the logic of chance brings them face to face.