implied a need of him. But there was no attempt to find the marker
at the place where the romance had been interrupted: therefore the visit
was not to renew the relations that had been severed, yet not broken.

What, then, brought this creature, still charming and giddy, whose heart
was gnawed and wrung with grief? And was she the woman--Guy knew her so
well!--to return thus, only to conjure up the vanished recollections, to
communicate the secret of her present sorrows and to permit Lissac to
inhale the odor of a departed perfume, more airy than the blue
smoke-wreaths that escaped from her cigarette?

After entrusting Guy with the secret of her yearning for solitude, she
again indulged in her sickly smile, and still looking at Guy:

"You are, I am told, a constant guest at Sabine Marsy's receptions?" she
said abruptly.

"Yes," replied Lissac. "But I have no great liking for political
salons."

"It is a political centre, and yet not, seemingly. It is about to become
a scientific one, if one may believe the reporters--Monsieur de Rosas is
announced.--By the way, my dear Guy, you still see Monsieur de Rosas!"

While Marianne uttered this name with an indifferent tone, she slightly
bent her head in order to scrutinize Guy.

He did not reply at once, seeking first to discover what object
Marianne had in speaking to him about De Rosas. In a vague way he
surmised that the great Castilian noble counted for something in
Marianne's visit.

"I always see him when he is in Paris," he said after a moment's pause.

"Then you will see him very soon, for he will arrive to-morrow."

"Who told you that?"

"The newspapers. You don't read the newspapers, then?--He is returning
from the East. Madame Marsy is bent on his narrating his travels, on the
occasion of a special soiree. A lecture! Our Rosas must have altered
immensely. He was wild enough of old."

"A shy fellow, which is quite different. But," asked Lissac after a
moment, "what about Rosas?"

"Tell me, in the first place, that you know perfectly well that he will
arrive to-morrow."

"I know it through the reporters, as you say. To-day, it is through the
reporters that one learns news of one's friends."

"The important fact is that you know him, and it is because I am
particularly anxious to hear Monsieur de Rosas that I come to ask you to
present me at Madame Marsy's."

"Oh! that is it?" Guy began.

"Yes, that is it. I am weary. I am crazy over the Orient. Yo