d foot peeping out,
giving to the eye the sensation of flesh gleaming through the almost
transparent stocking, he said: "Ah, that is what I should paint! That is
life--a woman's foot at the edge of her skirt! Into that subject one may
put everything--truth, desire, poetry. Nothing is more graceful or more
charming than a woman's foot; and what mystery it suggests: the hidden
limb, lost yet imagined beneath its veiling folds of drapery!"

Sitting on the floor, _a la Turque_, he seized her shoe and drew it off,
and the foot, coming out of its leather sheath, moved about quickly,
like a little animal surprised at being set free.

"Isn't that elegant, distinguished, and material--more material than the
hand? Show me your hand, Any!"

She wore long gloves reaching to the elbow. In order to remove one she
took it by the upper edge and slipped it down quickly, turning it inside
out, as one would skin a snake. The arm appeared, white, plump, round,
so suddenly bared as to produce an idea of complete and bold nudity.

She gave him her hand, which drooped from her wrist. The rings sparkled
on her white fingers, and the narrow pink nails seemed like amorous
claws protruding at the tips of that little feminine paw.

Olivier Bertin handled it tenderly and admiringly. He played with the
fingers as if they were live toys, while saying:

"What a strange thing! What a strange thing! What a pretty little
member, intelligent and adroit, which executes whatever one
wills--books, laces, houses, pyramids, locomotives, pastry, or caresses,
which last is its pleasantest function."

He drew off the rings one by one, and as the wedding-ring fell in its
turn, he murmured smilingly:

"The law! Let us salute it!"

"Nonsense!" said the Countess, slightly wounded.

Bertin had always been inclined to satirical banter, that tendency of
the French to mingle irony with the most serious sentiments, and he had
often unintentionally made her sad, without knowing how to understand
the subtle distinctions of women, or to discern the border of sacred
ground, as he himself said. Above all things it vexed her whenever he
alluded with a touch of familiar lightness to their attachment, which
was an affair of such long standing that he declared it the most
beautiful example of love in the nineteenth century. After a silence,
she inquired:

"Will you take Annette and me to the varnishing-day reception?"

"Certainly."

Then she asked him about the bes