h a nervous pressure and said as she still gazed at him:

"There is my uncle. We shall see each other again, shall we not?"

She crushed Rosas with her electric glance.

Preceding the duke, she went straight to Kayser and took his arm,
leaning on it as if to show that she was not alone, that she had a
natural protector, and was not, as Rosas might have supposed, a girl
without any position.

Kayser was almost astonished at the eagerness of his niece.

"Let us go!" she said to him.

"What! leave? Why, there is to be a supper."

"Well! we will sup at the studio," she replied nervously. "We will
discuss the morality of art."

She had now attained her end. She realized that anything she might add
would cool the impression already made on the duke. She wished to leave
him under the intoxication of that kiss.

"Let us go!" said Kayser, drawing himself up in an ill-humored way.
"Since you wish it--what a funny idea!--Ramel," he said, extending his
hand to the old journalist, "if your feelings prompt you, I should like
to show you some canvases."

"I go out so rarely," said Ramel.

"Huron!" said the painter.

"Puritan!" said Marianne, also offering her hand to Denis Ramel.

Rosas looked after her and saw her disappear amongst the guests in the
other salon, under the bright flood of light shed by the chandeliers;
and when she was gone, it seemed to him that the little Japanese salon
was positively empty and that night had fallen on it. Profound ennui at
once overcame him, while Marianne, in a happy frame of mind, on
returning to Kayser's studio, reviewed the incidents of that evening,
recalling Vaudrey's restless smile, and seeming again to hear Rosas's
confidences, while she thought: "He spoke to me of the past almost in
the same terms as Lissac. Is human nature at the bottom merely
commonplace, that two men of entirely different characters make almost
identical confessions?" While she was recalling that passionate moment,
the duke was experiencing a feeling of disappointment because of their
interrupted conversation, and he reproached himself for not having
followed Marianne, for having allowed her to escape without telling
her--

But what had he to tell her?

He had said everything. He had entirely surrendered, had opened his
soul, as transparent as crystal. And this notwithstanding that he had
vowed in past days that he would keep his secret locked within him. He
had smothered his love under his frigid Cas