her with an exuberance of feeling, as if she had been an idol that had come down for his sake from her sacred pedestal, and she listened to him with that fatigued languor which he had often seen reflected in her eyes after people had tired her by too long a visit. She continued affectionate, however, her face lighted up by a tender, slightly constrained smile, and she clasped the hand that she held in hers with a continuous pressure that perhaps was more studied than spontaneous.
She could not have been listening to him, for she interrupted one of his sentences to say: “Really, I must be going. I was to be at the Marquise de Bratiane’s at six o’clock, and I shall be very late.”
He conducted her to the gate by which she had obtained admission. They gave each other a parting kiss, and after a furtive glance up and down the street, she hurried away, keeping close to the walls.
When he was alone he felt within him that sudden void that is ever left by the disappearance of the woman whose kiss is still warm upon your lips, the queer little laceration of the heart that is caused by the sound of her retreating footsteps. It seemed to him that he was abandoned and alone, that he was never to see her again, and he betook himself to pacing the gravel-walks, reflecting upon this never-ceasing contrast between anticipation and realization. He remained there until it was dark, gradually becoming more tranquil and yielding himself more entirely to her influence, now that she was away, than if she had been there in his arms. Then he went home and dined without being conscious of what he was eating, and sat down to write to her.
The next day was a long one to him, and the evening seemed interminable. Why had she not answered his letter, why had she sent him no word? The morning of the second day he received a short telegram appointing another rendezvous at the same hour. The little blue envelope speedily cured him of the heartsickness of hope deferred from which he was beginning to suffer.
She came, as she had done before, punctual, smiling, and affectionate, and their second interview in the little house was in all respects similar to the first. André Mariolle, surprised at first and vaguely troubled that the ecstatic passion he had dreamed of had not made itself felt between them, but more and more overmastered by his senses, gradually forgot his visions of anticipation in the somewhat different happiness of possession. He was becoming attached to her by reason of her caresses, an invincible tie, the strongest tie of all, from which there is no deliverance when once it has fully possessed you and has penetrated through your flesh into your veins.
Twenty days rolled by, such sweet, fleeting days. It seemed to him that there was to be no end to it, that he was to live forever thus, nonexistent for all and living for her alone, and to his mental vision there presented itself the seductive dream of an unlimited continuance of this blissful, secret way of living.
She continued to make her visits at intervals of three days, offering no objections, attracted, it would seem, as much by the amusement she derived from their clandestine meetings — by the charm of the little house that had now been transformed into a conservatory of rare exotics and by the novelty of the situation, which could scarcely be called dangerous, since she was her own mistress, but still was full of mystery — as by the abject and constantly increasing tenderness of her lover.
At last there came a day when she said to him: “ Now, my dear friend, you must show yourself in society again. You will come and pass the afternoon with me tomorrow. I have given out that you are at home again.”
He was heartbroken. “Oh, why so soon?” he said.
“Because if it should leak out by any chance that you are in Paris your absence would be too inexplicable not to give rise to gossip.”
He saw that she was right and promised that he would come to her house the next day. Then he asked her: “Do you receive tomorrow?”
“Yes,” she replied. “It will be quite a little solemnity.”
He did not like this intelligence. “Of what description is your solemnity?”
She laughed gleefully. “I have prevailed upon Massival, by means of the grossest sycophancy, to give a performance of his ‘Dido,’ which no one has heard yet. It is the poetry of antique love. Mme de Bratiane, who considered herself Massival’s sole proprietor, is furious. She will be there, for she is to sing. Am I not a sly one?”
“Will there be many there?”
“Oh, no, only a few intimate friends. You know them nearly all.”
“Won’t you let me off? I am so happy in my solitude.”
“Oh! no, my friend. You know that I count on you more than all the rest.”
His heart gave a great thump. “Thank you,” he said; “I will come.”
French
VI
GOOD day, M. Mariolle.”
Mariolle noticed that it was no longer the “dear friend” of Auteuil, and the clasp of the hand was a hurried one, the hasty pressure of a busy woman wholly engrossed in her social functions. As he entered the salon Mme de Burne was advancing to speak to the beautiful Mme le Prieur, whose sculpturesque form, and the audacious way that she had of dressing to display it, had caused her to be nicknamed, somewhat ironically, “The Goddess.” She was the wife of a member of the Institute, of the section of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres.
“Ah, Mariolle!” exclaimed Lamarthe, “where do you come from? We thought that you were dead.”
“I have been making a trip through Finistère.”
He was going on to relate his impressions when the novelist interrupted him: “Are you acquainted with the Baronne de Frémines?”
“Only by sight; but I have heard a good deal of her. They say that she is queer.”
“The very queen of crazy women, but with an exquisite perfume of modernness. Come and let me present you to her.” Taking him by the arm he led him toward a young woman who was always compared to a doll, a pale and charming little blond doll, invented and created by the devil himself for the damnation of those larger children who wear beards on their faces. She had long, narrow eyes, slightly turned up toward the temples, apparently like the eyes of the Chinese; their soft blue glances stole out between lids that were seldom opened to their full extent, heavy, slowly-moving lids, designed to veil and hide this creature’s mysterious nature.
Her hair, very light in color, shone with silky, silvery reflections, and her delicate mouth, with its thin lips, seemed to have been cut by the light hand of a sculptor from the design of a miniature-painter. The voice that issued from it had bell-like intonations, and the audacity of her ideas, of a biting quality that was peculiar to herself, smacking of wickedness and drollery, their destructive charm, their cold, corrupting seductiveness, all the complicated nature of this full-grown, mentally diseased child acted upon those who were brought in contact with her in such a way as to produce in them violent passions and disturbances.
She was known all over Paris as being the most extravagant of the mondaines of the real monde, and also the wittiest, but no one could say exactly what she was, what were her ideas, what she did. She exercised an irresistible sway over mankind in general. Her husband, also, was quite as
