im a salutation from the window. Then she went down
stairs with a heart throbbing fast but happy now, thrilled with joy at
knowing him so near, of speaking to him and seeing him.

They met in the antechamber, before the drawing-room door.

He opened his arms to her with an irresistible impulse, and in a voice
warmed by real emotion, exclaimed: "Ah, my poor Countess, let me embrace
you!"

She closed her eyes, leaned toward him and pressed against him, lifted
her cheek to him, and as he pressed his lips upon it, she murmured in
his ear: "I love thee!"

Then Olivier, without dropping the hands he clasped in his own, looked
at her, saying: "Let us see that sad face."

She felt ready to faint.

"Yes, a little pale," said he, "but that is nothing."

To thank him for saying that, she said brokenly,

"Ah, dear friend, dear friend!" finding nothing else to say.

But he turned, looking behind her in search of Annette, who had
disappeared.

"Is it not strange," he said abruptly, "to see your daughter in
mourning?"

"Why?" inquired the Countess.

"What? You ask why?" he exclaimed, with extraordinary animation.
"Why, it is your own portrait painted by me--it is my portrait. It is
yourself, such as you were when I met you long ago when I entered the
Duchess's house! Ah, do you remember that door where you passed under my
gaze, as a frigate passes under a cannon of a fort? Good heavens! when
I saw the little one, just now, at the railway station, standing on the
platform, all in black, with the sun shining on her hair massed around
her face, the blood rushed to my head. I thought I should weep. I tell
you, it is enough to drive one mad, when one has known you as I have,
who has studied you as no one else has, and reproduced you in painting,
Madame. Ah, I thought that you had sent her alone to meet me at the
station in order to give me that surprise. My God! but I was surprised,
indeed! I tell you, it is enough to drive one mad."

He called: "Annette! Nane!"

The young girl's voice replied from outside, where she was giving sugar
to the horses:

"Yes, yes, I am here!"

"Come in here!"

She entered quickly.

"Here, stand close beside your mother."

She obeyed, and he compared the two, but repeated mechanically, "Yes,
it is astonishing, astonishing!" for they resembled each other less when
side by side than they did before leaving Paris, the young girl having
acquired a new expression of luminous youth in her bl