vas.

"You may go on, my child; it will not annoy him," said the Countess to
her daughter.

"What was she doing?"

"She was studying a _fantaisie_."

Annette rose to go to the piano. He followed her with his eyes,
unconsciously, as he always did, finding her pretty. Then he felt the
mother's eye upon him, and turned his head abruptly, as if he were
seeking something in the shadowy corner of the drawing-room.

The Countess took from her work-table a little gold case that he had
given her, opened it, and offered him some cigarettes.

"Pray smoke, my friend," said she; "you know I like it when we are alone
here."

He obeyed, and the music began. It was the music of the distant past,
graceful and light, one of those compositions that seem to have inspired
the artist on a soft moonlight evening in springtime.

"Who is the composer of that?" asked Bertin.

"Schumann," the Countess replied. "It is little known and charming."

A desire to look at Annette grew stronger within him, but he did not
dare. He would have to make only a slight movement, merely a turn of
the neck, for he could see out of the corner of his eye the two candles
lighting the score; but he guessed so well, read so clearly, the
watchful gaze of the Countess that he remained motionless, his eyes
looking straight before him, interested apparently in the gray thread of
smoke from his cigarette.

"Was that all you had to say to me?" Madame de Guilleroy murmured to
him.

He smiled.

"Don't be vexed with me. You know that music hypnotizes me; it drinks my
thoughts. I will talk soon."

"I must tell you," said the Countess, "that I had studied something for
you before mamma's death. I never had you hear it, but I will play it
for you immediately, as soon as the little one has finished; you shall
see how odd it is."

She had real talent, and a subtle comprehension of the emotion that
flows through sounds. It was indeed one of her surest powers over the
painter's sensibility.

As soon as Annette had finished the pastoral symphony by Mehul, the
Countess rose, took her place, and awakened a strange melody with her
fingers, a melody of which all the phrases seemed complaints, divers
complaints, changing, numerous, interrupted by a single note, beginning
again, falling into the midst of the strains, cutting them short,
scanning them, crashing into them, like a monotonous, incessant,
persecuting cry, an unappeasable call of obsession.

But Olivier wa