alone. I am sick with longing for him." And curled up in her
bed, she recollected intently the hours when they held each other in a
close embrace. She called him:

"My pussy-cat! Little wolf!"

And immediately the same train of thoughts began once more their
fatiguing procession through her mind.

"Our days are what we make them. Our days are what we make them. Our
days....' Fourteen and three, seventeen, and nine, twenty-six. I could
see quite plainly that Jeanne Perrin showed her long man's legs, dark
with hair, on purpose. Is it true what they say, that Jeanne Perrin
gives money to women? I must try my gown on at four o'clock to-morrow.
There's one dreadful thing, Madame Royaumont never can put in the
sleeves properly. How hot I am! Socrates is a good doctor. But he does
sometimes amuse himself by making you feel a stupid fool."

Suddenly she thought of Chevalier, and she seemed to feel an influence
emanating from him which was gliding along the walls of her bedroom. It
seemed to her that the glimmer of the night-light was dimmed by it. It
was less than a shadow, and it filled her with alarm. The idea suddenly
flashed through her mind that this subtle thing had its origin in the
portraits of the dead man. She had not kept any of them in her bedroom.
But there were still some in the flat, some that she had not torn up.
She carefully reckoned them up, and discovered that there must still be
three left: the first, when he was quite young, showed him against a
cloudy background; another, laughing and at his ease, sitting astride of
a chair; a third as Don Caesar de Bazan. In her hurry to destroy every
vestige of them she sprang out of bed, lit a candle, and in her
nightgown shuffled along in her slippers into the drawing-room, until
she came to the rosewood table, surmounted by a phoenix palm. She pulled
up the tablecloth and searched through the drawer. It contained
card-counters, sockets for candles, a few scraps of wood detached from
the furniture, two or three lustres belonging to the chandelier and a
few photographs, among which she found only one of Chevalier, the
earliest, showing him standing against a cloudy background.

She searched for the other two in a little piece of Boule furniture
which adorned the space between the windows, and on which were some
Chinese lamps. Here slumbered lamp-globes of ground glass, lamp-shades,
cut-glass goblets ornamented with gilt bronze, a match-stand in painted
porcelain