to show herself to all. Vaudrey had warned her, however. He
had written to her a few hours before, entreating her, nay, almost
commanding, her, not to come, and she was there. She entered, advancing
with head erect, leaning on the arm of her uncle, his white cravat
hidden by his artist's beard and on his lips a disdainful smile.

Adrienne asked herself whether she was really dreaming now. Approaching
her, she saw, crossing the salon with a queenly step, that lovely,
insolent creature, trailing a long black satin skirt, her superb bosom
imprisoned in a corsage trimmed with jet, and crossed, as it were, with
a blood-red stripe formed by a cordon of roses. Marianne's fawn-colored
head seemed to imperiously defy from afar the pale woman who stood with
her two hands falling at her side as if overwhelmed.

The vision, for vision it was, approached like one of the nightmares
that haunt people's dreams. Adrienne's first glance encountered the
direct gaze of Marianne's gray eyes. Behind Mademoiselle Kayser came De
Rosas, his ruddy Castilian face that was ordinarily pensive beamed
to-day, but Madame Vaudrey did not perceive him. She saw only this
woman, the woman who was approaching her, in her own house, insolently,
impudently, to defy her after having outraged her, to insult her after
having deceived her!

Adrienne felt a violent wrath rising within her and suddenly her entire
being seemed longing to bound toward Marianne, to drive her out after
casting her name in her teeth.

Instinctively she looked around her with the wild glance of a wretched
woman who no longer knows what to do, as if seeking for some assistance
or advice.

Vaudrey's wan pallor and Lissac's supplicating gesture appealed to her
and at once restored her to herself. It was true! she had no right to
cause a scandal. She was within the walls of the ministry, in a common
salon into which this girl had almost a right to enter, just like so
many others lost in the crowd of guests. For Adrienne, it was not merely
a question of personal vanity or honor that was at stake, but also
Vaudrey's reputation. She felt herself _in view_, ah! what a word:--in
view, that it to say, she was like an actress to whom neither a false
step nor a false note is permitted; compelled to smile while death was
at her heart, to parade while her entrails were torn with grief, forced
to feign and to wear a mask in the presence of all who were there, and
to lie to all the invited guests