and old, were arranged along the walls, as placed by
the servant, for there was nothing to reveal the tasty care of the woman
who loves her home. Four indifferent pictures, representing a boat on a
stream, a ship at sea, a mill on a plain, and a wood-cutter in a wood,
hung in the center of the four walls by cords of unequal length, and all
four on one side. It could be divined that they had been dangling thus
askew ever so long before indifferent eyes.

Duroy sat down immediately. He waited a long time. Then a door opened,
and Madame de Marelle hastened in, wearing a Japanese morning gown of
rose-colored silk embroidered with yellow landscapes, blue flowers, and
white birds.

"Fancy! I was still in bed!" she exclaimed. "How good of you to come and
see me! I had made up my mind that you had forgotten me."

She held out both her hands with a delighted air, and Duroy, whom the
commonplace appearance of the room had put at his ease, kissed one, as

he had seen Norbert de Varenne do.

She begged him to sit down, and then scanning him from head to foot,
said: "How you have altered! You have improved in looks. Paris has done
you good. Come, tell me the news."

And they began to gossip at once, as if they had been old acquaintances,
feeling an instantaneous familiarity spring up between them; feeling one
of those mutual currents of confidence, intimacy, and affection, which,
in five minutes, make two beings of the same breed and character good
friends.

Suddenly, Madame de Marelle exclaimed in astonishment: "It is funny how
I get on with you. It seems to me as though I had known you for ten
years. We shall become good friends, no doubt. Would you like it?"

He answered: "Certainly," with a smile which said still more.

He thought her very tempting in her soft and bright-hued gown, less
refined and delicate than the other in her white one, but more exciting
and spicy. When he was beside Madame Forestier, with her continual and
gracious smile which attracted and checked at the same time; which
seemed to say: "You please me," and also "Take care," and of which the
real meaning was never clear, he felt above all the wish to lie down at
her feet, or to kiss the lace bordering of her bodice, and slowly inhale
the warm and perfumed atmosphere that must issue from it. With Madame de
Marelle he felt within him a more definite, a more brutal desire--a
desire that made his fingers quiver in presence of the rounded outlines
of