ot wishing, as a matter of discretion, to be the first
to make an approach.

The Countess's letter aroused him like the stroke of a whip. It was
three o'clock in the afternoon. He decided to go immediately to her
house, that he might find her before she went out.

The valet appeared, summoned by the sound of Olivier's bell.

"What sort of weather is it, Joseph?"

"Very fine, Monsieur."

"Warm?"

"Yes, Monsieur."

"White waistcoat, blue jacket, gray hat."

He always dressed with elegance, but although his tailor turned him out
in correct styles, the very way in which he wore his clothes, his manner
of walking, his comfortable proportions encased in a white waistcoat,
his high gray felt hat, tilted a little toward the back of his head,
seemed to reveal at once that he was both an artist and a bachelor.

When he reached the Countess's house, he was told that she was dressing
for a drive in the Bois. He was a little vexed at this, and waited.

According to his habit, he began to pace to and fro in the drawing-room,
going from one seat to another, or from the windows to the wall, in the
large drawing-room darkened by the curtains. On the light tables with
gilded feet, trifles of various kinds, useless, pretty, and costly, lay
scattered about in studied disorder. There were little antique boxes of
chased gold, miniature snuff-boxes, ivory statuettes, objects in dull
silver, quite modern, of an exaggerated severity, in which English taste
appeared: a diminutive kitchen stove, and upon it a cat drinking from a
pan, a cigarette-case simulating a loaf of bread, a coffee-pot to hold
matches, and in a casket a complete set of doll's jewelry--necklaces,
bracelets, rings, brooches, ear-rings set with diamonds, sapphires,
rubies, emeralds, a microscopic fantasy that seemed to have been
executed by Lilliputian jewelers.

From time to time he touched some object, given by himself on some
anniversary; he lifted it, handled it, examining it with dreamy
indifference, then put it back in its place.

In one corner some books that were luxuriously bound but seldom
opened lay within easy reach on a round table with a single leg for a
foundation, which stood before a little curved sofa. The _Revue des Deux
Mondes_ lay there also, somewhat worn, with turned-down pages, as if it
had been read and re-read many times; other publications lay near it,
some of them uncut: the _Arts modernes_, which is bought only because of
its cost, th