Paris. She was trying to escape the horrible
sadness, the sinister disgust into which Mora's death had thrown her.
What a terrible blow for the proud girl! _Ennui_, pique, had thrown her
into this man's arms; she had given him pride--modesty--all; and now
he had carried all away with him, leaving her tarnished for life, a
tearless widow, without mourning and without dignity. Two or three
visits to Saint-James Villa, a few evenings in the back of some box
at some small theatre, behind the curtain that shelters forbidden and
shameful pleasure, these were the only memories left to her by this
liaison of a fortnight, this loveless intrigue wherein her pride had not
found even the satisfaction of the commotion caused by a big scandal.
The useless and indelible stain, the stupid fall of a woman who does not
know how to walk and who is embarrassed in her rising by the ironical
pity of the passers-by.

For a moment she thought of suicide, then the reflection that it would
be set down to a broken heart arrested her. She saw in a glance the
sentimental compassion of the drawing-rooms, the foolish figure that her
sham passion would cut among the innumberable love affairs of the duke,
and the Parma violets scattered by the pretty Moessards of journalism
on her grave, dug so near the other. Travelling remained to her--one of
those journeys so distant that they take even one's thoughts into a new
world. Unfortunately the money was wanting. Then she remembered that on
the morrow of her great success at the Exhibition, old Brahim Bey had
called to see her, to make her, in behalf of his master, magnificent
proposals for certain great works to be executed in Tunis. She had
said No at the time, without allowing herself to be tempted by Oriental
remuneration, a splendid hospitality, the finest court in the Bardo for
a studio, with its surrounding facades of stone in lacework carving. But
now she was quite willing. She had to make but a sign, the agreement
was immediately concluded, and after an exchange of telegrams, a hasty
packing and shutting up of the house, she set out for the railway
station as if for a week's absence, astonished herself by her prompt
decision, flattered on all the adventurous and artistic sides of her
nature by the hope of a new life in an unknown country.

The Bey's pleasure yacht was to await her at Genoa; and in anticipation,
closing her eyes in the cab which was taking her to the station, she
could see the whit