ust go."

But Annette begged her mother to walk home, since the weather was so
fine. The Countess consented, and, having thanked Bertin, went out into
the street with her daughter.

They walked for some time in silence, enjoying the sweet realization of
presents received; then they began to talk of all the jewels they had
seen and handled. Within their minds still lingered a sort of glittering
and jingling, an echo of gaiety. They walked quickly through the crowd
which fills the street about five o'clock on a summer evening. Men
turned to look at Annette, and murmured in distinct words of admiration
as they passed. It was the first time since her mourning, since black
attire had added brilliancy to her daughter's beauty, that the Countess
had gone out with her in the streets of Paris; and the sensation of that
street success, that awakened attention, those whispered compliments,
that little wake of flattering emotion which the passing of a pretty
woman leaves in a crowd of men, contracted her heart little by little
with the same painful feeling she had had the other evening in her
drawing-room, when her guests had compared the little one with her
own portrait. In spite of herself, she watched for those glances that
Annette attracted; she felt them coming from a distance, pass over her
own face without stopping and suddenly settle upon the fair face beside
her own. She guessed, she saw in the eyes the rapid and silent homage
to this blooming youth, to the powerful charm of that radiant freshness,
and she thought: "I was as pretty as she, if not prettier." Suddenly the
thought of Olivier flashed across her mind, and she was seized, as at
Roncieres, with a longing to flee.

She did not wish to feel herself any longer in this bright light, amid
this stream of people, seen by all those men who yet did not look at
her. Those days seemed far away, though in reality quite recent, when
she had sought and provoked comparison with her daughter. Who, to-day,
among the passers, thought of comparing them? Only one person had
thought of it, perhaps, a little while ago, in the jeweler's shop. He?
Oh, what suffering! Could it be that he was thinking continually of that
comparison? Certainly he could not see them together without thinking
of it, and without remembering the time when she herself had entered his
house, so fresh, so pretty, so sure of being loved!

"I feel ill," said she. "We will take a cab, my child."

Annette was un