other friendship, all other love, even, a little cold and incomplete,
and that if others also loved him he would perceive at last that she
alone of them all understood him.

She made the two drawing-rooms in her house, which he entered so often,
a place as attractive to the pride of the artist as to the heart of the
man, the place in all Paris where he liked best to come, because there
all his cravings were satisfied at the same time.

Not only did she learn to discover all his tastes, in order that,
while gratifying them in her own house, she might give him a feeling of
well-being that nothing could replace, but she knew how to create new
tastes, to arouse appetites of all kinds, material and intellectual,
habits of little attentions, of affections, of adoration and flattery!
She tried to charm his eye with elegance, his sense of smell with
perfumes, and his taste with delicate food.

But when she had planted in the soul and in the senses of a selfish
bachelor a multitude of petty, tyrannical needs, when she had become
quite certain that no mistress would trouble herself as she did to watch
over and maintain them, in order to surround him with all the little
pleasures of life, she suddenly feared, as she saw him disgusted with
his own home, always complaining of his solitary life, and, being
unable to come into her home except under all the restraints imposed
by society, going to the club, seeking every means to soften his lonely
lot--she feared lest he thought of marriage.

On some days she suffered so much from all these anxieties that she
longed for old age, to have an end of this anguish and rest in a cooler
and calmer affection.

Years passed, however, without disuniting them. The chain wherewith she
had attached him to her was heavy, and she made new links as the old
ones wore away. But, always solicitous, she watched over the painter's
heart as one guards a child crossing a street full of vehicles, and
day by day she lived in expectation of the unknown danger, the dread of
which always hung over her.

The Count, without suspicion or jealousy, found this intimacy of his
wife with a famous and popular artist a perfectly natural thing. Through
continually meeting, the two men, becoming accustomed to each other,
finally became excellent friends.

CHAPTER II

TWIN ROSES FROM A SINGLE STEM

When Bertin entered, on Friday evening, the house of his friend, where
he was to dine in honor of the return of