The woman becomes the man's mistress and loves him.

How?
why?
Their two existences are henceforth one; they have scarcely begun to know one another when it seems as if they had known one another always, and all that had gone before is wiped out from the memory of the two lovers.

It is curious, one must admit.
As for me, I no longer remembered how I had lived before that night.
My whole being was exalted into joy at the memory of the words we had exchanged during that first night.

Either Marguerite was very clever in deception, or she had conceived for me one of those sudden passions which are revealed in the first kiss, and which die, often enough, as suddenly as they were born.
The more I reflected the more I said to myself that Marguerite had no reason for feigning a love which she did not feel, and I said to myself also that women have two ways of loving, one of which may arise from the other: they love with the heart or with the senses.

Often a woman takes a lover in obedience to the mere will of the senses, and learns without expecting it the mystery of immaterial love, and lives henceforth only through her heart; often a girl who has sought in marriage only the union of two pure affections receives the sudden revelation of physical love, that energetic conclusion of the purest impressions of the soul.
In the midst of these thoughts I fell asleep; I was awakened by a letter from Marguerite containing these words: "Here are my orders: To-night at the Vaudeville.
"Come during the third entr'acte." I put the letter into a drawer, so that I might always have it at band in case I doubted its reality, as I did from time to time.
She did not tell me to come to see her during the day, and I dared not go; but I had so great a desire to see her before the evening that I went to the Champs-Elysees, where I again saw her pass and repass, as I had on the previous day.
At seven o'clock I was at the Vaudeville.