r
voice, and that's an unpardonable crime."

This time Nana did not turn round. She had taken up the hare's-foot and
was lightly manipulating it. All her attention was concentrated on this
action, and she bent forward over her toilet table so very far that the
white round contour of her drawers and the little patch of chemise stood
out with the unwonted tension. But she was anxious to prove that
she appreciated the old man's compliment and therefore made a little
swinging movement with her hips.

Silence reigned. Mme Jules had noticed a tear in the right leg of her
drawers. She took a pin from over her heart and for a second or so knelt
on the ground, busily at work about Nana's leg, while the young woman,
without seeming to notice her presence, applied the rice powder, taking
extreme pains as she did so, to avoid putting any on the upper part of
her cheeks. But when the prince remarked that if she were to come
and sing in London all England would want to applaud her, she laughed
amiably and turned round for a moment with her left cheek looking very
white amid a perfect cloud of powder. Then she became suddenly serious,
for she had come to the operation of rouging. And with her face once
more close to the mirror, she dipped her finger in a jar and began
applying the rouge below her eyes and gently spreading it back toward
her temples. The gentlemen maintained a respectful silence.

Count Muffat, indeed, had not yet opened his lips. He was thinking
perforce of his own youth. The bedroom of his childish days had been
quite cold, and later, when he had reached the age of sixteen and would
give his mother a good-night kiss every evening, he used to carry the
icy feeling of the embrace into the world of dreams. One day in passing
a half-open door he had caught sight of a maidservant washing herself,
and that was the solitary recollection which had in any way troubled
his peace of mind from the days of puberty till the time of marriage.
Afterward he had found his wife strictly obedient to her conjugal duties
but had himself felt a species of religious dislike to them. He had
grown to man's estate and was now aging, in ignorance of the flesh, in
the humble observance of rigid devotional practices and in obedience to
a rule of life full of precepts and moral laws. And now suddenly he was
dropped down in this actress's dressing room in the presence of this
undraped courtesan.

He, who had never seen the Countess Muffat putti