e and caressing as a kiss; she was sleeping alone
and tranquil, the happy and profound sleep of divorced women.

She was awakened by loud voices in the little blue drawing-room, and she
recognized her dear friend, the little Baroness de Grangerie, who was
disputing with the lady's maid, because the latter would not allow her
to go into her mistress' room. So the little Marchioness got up, opened
the door, drew back the door-hangings and showed her head, nothing but
her fair head, hidden under a cloud of hair.

"What is the matter with you, that you have come so early?" she asked.
"It is not nine o'clock yet."

The little baroness who was very pale, nervous and feverish, replied: "I
must speak to you. Something horrible has happened to me." "Come in, my
dear."

She went in, they kissed each other, and the little Marchioness got back
into her bed while the lady's maid opened the windows to let in light
and air, and then when she had left the room, Madame de Rennedon went
on: "Well, tell me what it is."

Madame de Grangerie began to cry, shedding those pretty, bright tears
which make woman more charming, and she stammered without wiping her
eyes, so as not to make them red: "Oh! my dear, what has happened to me
is abominable, abominable. I have not slept all night, not a minute; do
you hear, not a minute. Here, just feel my heart, how it is beating."

And, taking her friend's hand, she put it on her breast, on that firm,
round covering of women's hearts which often suffices men, and prevents
them from seeking beneath. But her breast was really beating violently.

She continued: "It happened to me yesterday during the day, at about
four o'clock ... or half-past four; I cannot say exactly. You know my
apartments, and you know that my little drawing-room, where I always
sit, looks onto the Rue Saint-Lazare, and that I have a mania for
sitting at the window to look at the people passing. The neighborhood of
the railway station is very gay; so full of motion and lively.... Well,
that is just what I like! So, yesterday, I was sitting in the low chair
which I have placed in my window recess; the window was open and I was
not thinking of anything; I was breathing the fresh air. You remember
how fine it was yesterday!

"Suddenly, I remarked that there was also a woman sitting at the window,
a woman in red; I was in mauve, you know, my pretty mauve costume. I did
not know the woman, a new lodger, who had been there a month,