ntion upon Monsieur
Bondois, she gave him a passing glance of hostility, and by chance let a
drop of candle-grease disfigure his nose.

Madame Nanteuil, who was now wide awake, could make nothing of her
proceedings.

"Felicie, why on earth are you poking about in my wardrobe like that?"

Felicie, who at last held the photograph for which she had sought so
assiduously, responded only by a cry of fierce delight and flew from the
chair, taking with her her dead friend, and, inadvertently, Monsieur
Bondois as well.

Returning to the drawing-room she crouched down by the fireplace, and
made a fire of paper, into which she cast Chevalier's three photographs.
She watched them blazing, and when the three bits of cardboard, twisted
and blackened, had flown up the chimney, and neither shape nor substance
was left, she breathed freely. She really believed, this time, that she
had deprived the jealous dead man of the material of his apparitions,
and had freed herself from the dreaded obsession.

On picking up her candlestick she saw Monsieur Bondois, whose nose had
disappeared beneath a round blob of white wax. Not knowing what to do
with him she threw him with a laugh into the still flaming grate.

Returning to her room she stood before the looking-glass and drew her
nightgown closely about her, in order to emphasize the lines of her
body. A thought which occasionally flitted through her mind tarried
there this time a little longer than usual.

She was wont to ask herself:

"Why is one made like that, with a head, arms, legs, hands, feet, chest,
and abdomen? Why is one made like that and not otherwise? It's funny."

And at the moment the human form seemed to her arbitrary, fantastic,
alien. But her astonishment was soon over. And, as she looked at
herself, she felt pleased with herself. She was conscious of a keen
deep-seated delight in herself. She bared her breasts, held them
delicately in the hollow of her hands, looked at them tenderly in the
glass, as if they were not a part of herself, but something belonging
to her, like two living creatures, like a pair of doves.

After smiling upon them, she went back to bed. Waking late in the
morning she felt surprised for a moment at being alone in her bed.
Sometimes, in a dream, she would divide herself into two beings, and,
feeling her own flesh, she would dream that she was being caressed by a
woman.

CHAPTER XIX

The dress rehearsal of _La Grille_ was called