move away, Marianne detained him by a gesture:

"Well, your Excellency," she remarked, with a charming play of her lips
as she smiled, "you see,"--and she pointed to the blue draperies of the
little salon, as dainty as a boudoir--"you see that there are some women
who like blue."

"Yes, Madame Marsy!--" Vaudrey answered, with an entirely misplaced
irony that naturally occurred to him, as a reproach.

"So do I," said Marianne. "We have only chatted together five minutes,
but I have found that time enough to discover that you and I have many
tastes in common. I am greatly flattered thereby."

"And I am very happy," replied Vaudrey, who was disturbed by her direct
glances that pierced him like a blade.

She had resumed her place on the divan, but Vaudrey had already forgiven
her tete-a-tete with Rosas--and in truth, what had he to forgive?--This
burning glance had effaced everything. He bore it away like a bright ray
and still shuddered at the sensation he experienced.

He was in a hurry to leave. He now felt a sudden attack of nervousness.
He was at the same moment charmed and bored. Again he resumed--amid the
throng that made way for him, humbly performing its duty as a crowd--his
role of minister, raising his head, and greeting with his official
smile, but, at the bottom of his heart, really consumed by an entirely
different thought. His brain was full of blue, of floating clouds, and
he still heard Marianne's voice ringing in his ears with an insinuating
tone, whispering: "We have many tastes in common," together with all
kinds of mutual understandings which, as it were, burned like a fire in
his heart.

He saw Adrienne still seated in the same place and smiling sweetly at
him,--a smile of ardent devotion, but which seemed to him to be
lukewarm. He leaned toward her, reached his hands out and said to De
Lissac, hurriedly, as he grasped his hand: "We meet later, do we not,
Guy?" Then he disappeared in the antechamber, while the servants
hurried toward Madame Vaudrey, bearing her cloak, and as Vaudrey put on
his overcoat, a voice called out:

"His Excellency's carriage."

"I am exhausted," said Adrienne, when she had taken her place in the
carriage. "What about yourself?"

"I? not at all! I am not at all tired. It was very entertaining! One
must show one's self now--"

"I know that very well," the young wife replied.

Like a child who is anxious to go to sleep, she gently rested her
hood-covered head on S