now, she is not a flirt?"

"No, indeed, I assure you!"

"Well, I am quite reassured on another account," said the Countess. "You
never will love anyone but me now. It is all over for the others. It is
too late, my poor dear!"

The painter experienced that slight painful emotion which touches
the heart of middle-aged men when some one mentions their age; and he
murmured: "To-day and to-morrow, as yesterday, there never has been in
my life, and never will be, anyone but you, Any."

She took him by the arm, and turning again toward the divan made him sit
beside her.

"Of what were you thinking?" she asked.

"I am looking for a subject to paint."

"What, pray?"

"I don't know, you see, since I am still seeking it."

"What have you been doing lately?"

He was obliged to tell her of all the visits he had received, about
all the dinners and soirees he had attended, and to repeat all the
conversations and chit-chat. Both were really interested in all these
futile and familiar details of fashionable life. The little rivalries,
the flirtations, either well known or suspected, the judgments, a
thousand times heard and repeated, upon the same persons, the same
events and opinions, were bearing away and drowning both their minds in
that troubled and agitated stream called Parisian life. Knowing everyone
in all classes of society, he as an artist to whom all doors were open,
she as the elegant wife of a Conservative deputy, they were experts
in that sport of brilliant French chatter, amiably satirical, banal,
brilliant but futile, with a certain shibboleth which gives a particular
and greatly envied reputation to those whose tongues have become supple
in this sort of malicious small talk.

"When are you coming to dine?" she asked suddenly.

"Whenever you wish. Name your day."

"Friday. I shall have the Duchesse de Mortemain, the Corbelles, and
Musadieu, in honor of my daughter's return--she is coming this evening.
But do not speak of it, my friend. It is a secret."

"Oh, yes, I accept. I shall be charmed to see Annette again. I have not
seen her in three years."

"Yes, that is true. Three years!"

Though Annette, in her earliest years, had been brought up in Paris in
her parents' home, she had become the object of the last and passionate
affection of her grandmother, Madame Paradin, who, almost blind,
lived all the year round on her son-in-law's estate at the castle of
Roncieres, on the Eure. Little by little, th