hed.

"Yes, it's true; you're a bachelor tonight," she murmured. "Your wife
doesn't return till tomorrow, eh?"

"Yes," replied Muffat. It embarrassed him somewhat to hear her talking
familiarly about the countess.

But she pressed him further, asking at what time the train was due and
wanting to know whether he were going to the station to meet her. She
had begun to walk more slowly than ever, as though the shops interested
her very much.

"Now do look!" she said, pausing anew before a jeweler's window, "what a
funny bracelet!"

She adored the Passage des Panoramas. The tinsel of the ARTICLE DE
PARIS, the false jewelry, the gilded zinc, the cardboard made to look
like leather, had been the passion of her early youth. It remained, and
when she passed the shop-windows she could not tear herself away from
them. It was the same with her today as when she was a ragged,
slouching child who fell into reveries in front of the chocolate maker's
sweet-stuff shows or stood listening to a musical box in a neighboring
shop or fell into supreme ecstasies over cheap, vulgarly designed
knickknacks, such as nutshell workboxes, ragpickers' baskets for holding
toothpicks, Vendome columns and Luxor obelisks on which thermometers
were mounted. But that evening she was too much agitated and looked at
things without seeing them. When all was said and done, it bored her to
think she was not free. An obscure revolt raged within her, and amid it
all she felt a wild desire to do something foolish. It was a great
thing gained, forsooth, to be mistress of men of position! She had been
devouring the prince's substance and Steiner's, too, with her childish
caprices, and yet she had no notion where her money went. Even at
this time of day her flat in the Boulevard Haussmann was not entirely
furnished. The drawing room alone was finished, and with its red satin
upholsteries and excess of ornamentation and furniture it struck
a decidedly false note. Her creditors, moreover, would now take to
tormenting her more than ever before whenever she had no money on hand,
a fact which caused her constant surprise, seeing that she was wont
to quote her self as a model of economy. For a month past that thief
Steiner had been scarcely able to pay up his thousand francs on the
occasions when she threatened to kick him out of doors in case he failed
to bring them. As to Muffat, he was an idiot: he had no notion as to
what it was usual to give, and she could not,