, indeed. We talk of you very
often. He has never told you, then?"

"Never. He must be a terribly sly fellow."

She stopped short, her mind enlightened by a flash; and quickly without
heed to de Gery, who was coming up to congratulate her on her triumph,
she leaned over towards Aline and spoke to her in a low voice. That
young lady blushed, protested with smiles and words under her breath:
"How can you think of such a thing? At my age--a 'grandmamma'!" and
finally seized her father's arm in order to escape some friendly
teasing.

When Felicia saw the two young people going off together, when she had
realized the fact, which they had not yet grasped themselves, that they
were in love with each other, she felt as it were a crumbling all
around her. Then upon her dream, now fallen to the ground in a thousand
fragments, she set herself to stamp furiously. After all, he was quite
right to prefer this little Aline to herself. Would an honest man
ever dare to marry Mlle. Ruys? She, a home, a family--what nonsense! A
harlot's daughter you are, my dear; you must be a harlot too if you want
to become anything at all.

The day wore on. The crowd, more active now that there were empty spaces
here and there, commenced to stream towards the door of exit after great
eddyings round the successes of the year, satisfied, rather tired, but
excited still by that air charged with the electricity of art. A great
flood of sunlight, such as sometimes occurs at four o'clock in the
afternoon, fell on the stained-glass rose-window, threw on the sand
tracks of rainbow-coloured lights, softly bathing the bronze or the
marble of the statues, imparting an iridescent hue to the nudity of a
beautiful figure, giving to the vast museum something of the luminous
life of a garden. Felicia, absorbed in her deep and sad reverie, did not
notice the man who advanced towards her, superb, elegant, fascinating,
through the respectfully opened ranks of the public, while the name of
"Mora" was everywhere whispered.

"Well, mademoiselle, you have made a splendid success. I only regret one
thing about it, and that is the cruel symbol which you have hidden in
your masterpiece."

As she saw the duke before her, she shuddered.

"Ah, yes, the symbol," she said, lifting her face towards his with a
smile of discouragement; and leaning against the pedestal of the large,
voluptuous statue near which they happened to be standing, with the
closed eyes of a woman who g