another. It was Fauchery who first stretched out his hand. Muffat gave
him his. Their hands remained clasped, and the Countess Sabine with
downcast eyes stood smiling before them, while the waltz continually
beat out its mocking, vagabond rhythm.

"But the thing's going on wheels!" said Steiner.

"Are their hands glued together?" asked Foucarmont, surprised at this
prolonged clasp. A memory he could not forget brought a faint glow to
Fanchery's pale cheeks, and in his mind's eye he saw the property room
bathed in greenish twilight and filled with dusty bric-a-brac. And
Muffat was there, eggcup in hand, making a clever use of his suspicions.
At this moment Muffat was no longer suspicious, and the last vestige of
his dignity was crumbling in ruin. Fauchery's fears were assuaged, and
when he saw the frank gaiety of the countess he was seized with a desire
to laugh. The thing struck him as comic.

"Aha, here she is at last!" cried La Faloise, who did not abandon a jest
when he thought it a good one. "D'you see Nana coming in over there?"

"Hold your tongue, do, you idiot!" muttered Philippe.

"But I tell you, it is Nana! They're playing her waltz for her, by Jove!
She's making her entry. And she takes part in the reconciliation, the
devil she does! What? You don't see her? She's squeezing all three of
'em to her heart--my cousin Fauchery, my lady cousin and her husband,
and she's calling 'em her dear kitties. Oh, those family scenes give me
a turn!"

Estelle had come up, and Fauchery complimented her while she stood
stiffly up in her rose-colored dress, gazing at him with the astonished
look of a silent child and constantly glancing aside at her father and
mother. Daguenet, too, exchanged a hearty shake of the hand with the
journalist. Together they made up a smiling group, while M. Venot came
gliding in behind them. He gloated over them with a beatified expression
and seemed to envelop them in his pious sweetness, for he rejoiced in
these last instances of self-abandonment which were preparing the means
of grace.

But the waltz still beat out its swinging, laughing, voluptuous measure;
it was like a shrill continuation of the life of pleasure which was
beating against the old house like a rising tide. The band blew louder
trills from their little flutes; their violins sent forth more swooning
notes. Beneath the Genoa velvet hangings, the gilding and the paintings,
the lusters exhaled a living heat and a great glow