go to Madame
Meillan's yesterday."

"You are right to show yourself there as little as possible. It is not a
house for you."

He explained. All the women that went there had had some spicy adventure
which was known and talked about. Besides, Madame Meillan favored
intrigue. He gave examples. Madame Martin, however, her hands extended
on the arms of the chair in charming restfulness, her head inclined,
looked at the dying embers in the grate. Her thoughtful mood had flown.
Nothing of it remained on her face, a little saddened, nor in her
languid body, more desirable than ever in the quiescence of her mind.
She kept for a while a profound immobility, which added to her personal
attraction the charm of things that art had created.

He asked her of what she was thinking. Escaping the magic of the blaze
in the ashes, she said:

"We will go to-morrow, if you wish, to far distant places, to the odd
districts where the poor people live. I like the old streets where
misery dwells."

He promised to satisfy her taste, although he let her know that he
thought it absurd. The walks that she led him sometimes bored him, and
he thought them dangerous. People might see them.

"And since we have been successful until now in not causing gossip--"

She shook her head.

"Do you think that people have not talked about us? Whether they know
or do not know, they talk. Not everything is known, but everything is
said."

She relapsed into her dream. He thought her discontented, cross, for
some reason which she would not tell. He bent upon her beautiful, grave
eyes which reflected the light of the grate. But she reassured him.

"I do not know whether any one talks about me. And what do I care?
Nothing matters."

He left her. He was going to dine at the club, where a friend was
waiting for him. She followed him with her eyes, with peaceful sympathy.
Then she began again to read in the ashes.

She saw in them the days of her childhood; the castle wherein she had
passed the sweet, sad summers; the dark and humid park; the pond where
slept the green water; the marble nymphs under the chestnut-trees, and
the bench on which she had wept and desired death. To-day she still
ignored the cause of her youthful despair, when the ardent awakening of
her imagination threw her into a troubled maze of desires and of fears.
When she was a child, life frightened her. And now she knew that life is
not worth so much anxiety nor so much hope; that it