ain before his departure.

As he was well accustomed to making excuses of that sort, he failed to
observe that it was not natural for Therese to offer them. Embarrassed
by this tissue of social obligations, he did not persist, but remained
silent and unhappy.

With her left arm she raised the portiere, placed her right hand on
the key of the door; and, standing against the rich background of the
sapphire and ruby-colored folds of the Oriental draperies, she
turned her head toward the friend she was leaving, and said, a little
mockingly, yet with a touch of tragic emotion:

"Good-by, Robert. Enjoy yourself. My calls, my errands, your little
visits are nothing. Life is made up of just such trifles. Good-by!"

She went out. He would have liked to accompany her, but he made it a
point not to show himself with her in the street, unless she absolutely
forced him to do so.

In the street, Therese felt suddenly that she was alone in the world,
without joy and without pain. She returned to her house on foot, as was
her habit. It was night; the air was frozen, clear, and tranquil. But
the avenues through which she walked, in shadows studded with lights,
enveloped her with that mild atmosphere of the queen of cities, so
agreeable to its inhabitants, which makes itself felt even in the cold
of winter. She walked between the lines of huts and old houses, remains
of the field-days of Auteuil, which tall houses interrupted here and
there. These small shops, these monotonous windows, were nothing to her.
Yet she felt that she was under the mysterious spell of the friendship
of inanimate things; and it seemed to her that the stones, the doors of
houses, the lights behind the windowpanes, looked kindly upon her. She
was alone, and she wished to be alone. The steps she was taking between
the two houses wherein her habits were almost equal, the steps she had
taken so often, to-day seemed to her irrevocable. Why? What had that day
brought? Not exactly a quarrel. And yet the words spoken that day had
left a subtle, strange, persistent sting, which would never leave her.
What had happened? Nothing. And that nothing had effaced everything. She
had a sort of obscure certainty that she would never return to that room
which had so recently enclosed the most secret and dearest phases of her
life. She had loved Robert with the seriousness of a necessary joy. Made
to be loved, and very reasonable, she had not lost in the abandonment of
herself