Monsieur Milial?"

"Yes."

"Introduce us."

A minute later we were shaking hands and talking in the doorway. What he
said was correct, agreeable to hear; it contained no irritable thought.
The voice was sweet, soft, caressing, musical; but I had heard others
much more attractive, much more moving. One listened to him with
pleasure, just as one would look at a pretty little brook. No tension of
the mind was necessary in order to follow him, no hidden meaning aroused
curiosity, no expectation awoke interest. His conversation was rather
restful, but it did not awaken in one either a desire to answer, to
contradict or to approve, and it was as easy to answer him as it was to
listen to him. The response came to the lips of its own accord, as soon
as he had finished talking, and phrases turned toward him as if he had
naturally aroused them.

One thought soon struck me. I had known him for a quarter of an hour, and
it seemed as if he were already one of my old friends, that I had known
all about him for a long time; his face, his gestures, his voice, his
ideas. Suddenly, after a few minutes of conversation, he seemed already
to be installed in my intimacy. All constraint disappeared between us,
and, had he so desired, I might have confided in him as one confides only
in old friends.

Certainly there was some mystery about him. Those barriers that are
closed between most people and that are lowered with time when sympathy,
similar tastes, equal intellectual culture and constant intercourse
remove constraint--those barriers seemed not to exist between him
and me, and no doubt this was the case between him and all people, both
men and women, whom fate threw in his path.

After half an hour we parted, promising to see each other often, and he
gave me his address after inviting me to take luncheon with him in two
days.

I forgot what hour he had stated, and I arrived too soon; he was not yet
home. A correct and silent domestic showed me into a beautiful, quiet,
softly lighted parlor. I felt comfortable there, at home. How often I
have noticed the influence of apartments on the character and on the
mind! There are some which make one feel foolish; in others, on the
contrary, one always feels lively. Some make us sad, although well
lighted and decorated in light-colored furniture; others cheer us up,
although hung with sombre material. Our eye, like our heart, has its
likes and dislikes, of which it does not inform us, and