changed my body
at the same time, and rejuvenated me a little." Suddenly he saw Julio
hunting among the bushes. He called him, and when the dog ran up to put
his finely formed head, with its curly ears, under his hand, he sat down
on the grass to pet him more comfortably, spoke gentle words to him,
laid him on his knees, and growing tender as he caressed the animal, he
kissed it, after the fashion of women whose hearts are easily moved to
demonstration.

After dinner, instead of going out as on the evening before, they spent
the hours in the drawing-room.

Suddenly the Countess said: "We must leave here soon."

"Oh, don't speak of that yet!" Olivier exclaimed. "You would not leave
Roncieres when I was not here; now what I have come, you think only of
going away."

"But, my dear friend," said she, "we three cannot remain here
indefinitely."

"It does not necessarily follow that we need stay indefinitely, but just
a few days. How many times have I stayed at your house for whole weeks?"

"Yes, but in different circumstances, when the house was open to
everyone."

"Oh, mamma," said Annette, coaxingly, "let us stay a few days more, just
two or three. He teaches me so well how to play tennis. It annoys me to
lose, but afterward I am glad to have made such progress."

Only that morning the Countess had been planning to make this mysterious
visit of her friend's last until Sunday, and now she wished to go away,
without knowing why. That day which she had hoped would be such a
happy one had left in her soul an inexpressible but poignant sadness, a
causeless apprehension, as tenacious and confused as a presentiment.

When she was once more alone in her room she even sought to define this
new access of melancholy.

Had she experienced one of those imperceptible emotions whose touch has
been so slight that reason does not remember it, but whose vibrations
still stir the most sensitive chords of the heart? Perhaps? Which? She
recalled, certainly, some little annoyances, in the thousand degrees of
sentiment through which she had passed, each minute having its own. But
they were too petty to have thus disheartened her. "I am exacting," she
thought. "I have no right to torment myself in this way."

She opened her window, to breathe the night air, and leaned on the
window-sill, gazing at the moon.

A slight noise made her look down. Olivier was pacing before the castle.
"Why did he say that he was going to his room?" she