aigne,
Champs-Elysees, where he sometimes entertained Marianne as he might have
done a princess. At such times she gossiped while smoking Turkish
tobacco. Her Parisian grace, her champagne-like effervescent manner,
seduced and charmed this serious, pale traveller, whose very smile
was tinged with melancholy.

He completely adored this woman and no longer made an effort to resist.
He entirely forgot that it was through Guy that he had known her. It
seemed to him that he had himself discovered her, and besides, she had
never loved Guy. No, certainly not. She was frank enough to acknowledge
everything. Then she denied that Lissac ever--Then what! If it should be
true? But no! no! Marianne denied it. He blindly believed in Marianne.

All the conflicting, frantic arguments that men make when they are about
to commit some foolish action were at war in Jose's brain. The more so
as he did not attempt to analyze his feelings. He passed, near this
pretty woman whose finger-tips he hardly dared kiss, the most delicious
summer of his life. Once, however, on going out with Marianne in the
Champs-Elysees, he had met the old Dujarrier with the swollen eyelids
and the yellow hair that he had known formerly. One of his friends, the
Marquis Vergano, had committed suicide at twenty for this woman who was
old enough to be his mother. The Dujarrier had stopped and greeted
Marianne, but as she remarked herself, a thousand bows and scrapes were
thrown away, for Rosas had hardly noticed her with a glacial look.

"Why do you return that woman's salutation?" he at once asked Marianne.

"I need her. She has done me services."

"That is surprising! I thought her incapable of doing anything but
harm."

He did not dream of Mademoiselle Kayser's coming in contact with
courtesans. In the tiny, virtuous room in Rue Cuvier, Rosas thought that
Marianne was in her true surroundings. She would frequently sit at the
piano--one of the few pieces of furniture contained in this
apartment,--and play for Rosas Oriental melodies that would transport
him far away in thought, to the open desert, by the slow lulling of
David's _Caravane_, then abruptly change to that familiar air, that
rondeau of the Varietes that he hummed yonder, on his dunghill,
forsaken--

"Voyez-vous, la-bas,
Cette maison blanche--"

"I love that music-hall air!" she said.

He now no longer meditated resuming travel, or quitting Paris.
Mademoiselle Kayser's hold on him grew