not seen you for three days, and
that seems a long time to me. My daughter occupies much of my time, but
you know that I can no longer do without you._"

The painter, who was drawing sketches, ever seeking a new subject
re-read the Countess's note, then, opening the drawer of a writing-desk,
he deposited it on a heap of other letters, which had been accumulating
there since the beginning of their love-affair.

Thanks to the opportunities given them by the customs of fashionable
society, they had grown used to seeing each other almost every day. Now
and then she visited him, and sat for an hour or two in the armchair in
which she had posed, while he worked. But, as she had some fear of the
criticisms of the servants, she preferred to receive him at her own
house, or to meet him elsewhere, for that daily interview, that small
change of love.

These meetings would be agreed upon beforehand, and always seemed
perfectly natural to M. de Guilleroy.

Twice a week at least the painter dined at the Countess's house, with
a few friends; on Monday nights he visited her in her box at the Opera;
then they would agree upon a meeting at such or such a house, to which
chance led them at the same hour. He knew the evenings that she did
not go out, and would call then to have a cup of tea with her, feeling
himself very much at home even near the folds of her robe, so tenderly
and so surely settled in that ripe affection, so fixed in the habit of
finding her somewhere, of passing some time by her side, or exchanging
a few words with her and of mingling a few thoughts, that he felt,
although the glow of his passion had long since faded, an incessant need
of seeing her.

The desire for family life, for a full and animated household, for the
family table, for those evenings when one talks without fatigue with
old friends, that desire for contact, for familiarity, for human
intercourse, which dwells dormant in every human heart, and which every
old bachelor carries from door to door to his friends, where he installs
something of himself, added a strain of egoism to his sentiments of
affection. In that house, where he was loved and spoiled, where he found
everything, he could still rest and nurse his solitude.

For three days he had not seen his friends, who must be very much
occupied by the return of the daughter of the house; and he was already
feeling bored, and even a little offended because they had not sent for
him sooner, but n