eductive. When she
shut her right eye and passed the brush along it he understood that he
belonged to her.

"They are stamping their feet, madame," the callboy once more cried.
"They'll end by smashing the seats. May I give the knocks?"

"Oh, bother!" said Nana impatiently. "Knock away; I don't care! If I'm
not ready, well, they'll have to wait for me!"

She grew calm again and, turning to the gentlemen, added with a smile:

"It's true: we've only got a minute left for our talk."

Her face and arms were now finished, and with her fingers she put two
large dabs of carmine on her lips. Count Muffat felt more excited than
ever. He was ravished by the perverse transformation wrought by powders
and paints and filled by a lawless yearning for those young painted
charms, for the too-red mouth and the too-white face and the exaggerated
eyes, ringed round with black and burning and dying for very love.
Meanwhile Nana went behind the curtain for a second or two in order
to take off her drawers and slip on Venus' tights. After which, with
tranquil immodesty, she came out and undid her little linen stays and
held out her arms to Mme Jules, who drew the short-sleeved tunic over
them.

"Make haste; they're growing angry!" she muttered.

The prince with half-closed eyes marked the swelling lines of her bosom
with an air of connoisseurship, while the Marquis de Chouard wagged his
head involuntarily. Muffat gazed at the carpet in order not to see any
more. At length Venus, with only her gauze veil over her shoulders, was
ready to go on the stage. Mme Jules, with vacant, unconcerned eyes and
an expression suggestive of a little elderly wooden doll, still kept
circling round her. With brisk movements she took pins out of the
inexhaustible pincushion over her heart and pinned up Venus' tunic, but
as she ran over all those plump nude charms with her shriveled hands,
nothing was suggested to her. She was as one whom her sex does not
concern.

"There!" said the young woman, taking a final look at herself in the
mirror.

Bordenave was back again. He was anxious and said the third act had
begun.

"Very well! I'm coming," replied Nana. "Here's a pretty fuss! Why, it's
usually I that waits for the others."

The gentlemen left the dressing room, but they did not say good-by, for
the prince had expressed a desire to assist behind the scenes at the
performance of the third act. Left alone, Nana seemed greatly surprised
and looked roun