apart. Remy rises, hostile and resigned.
He is always the one to open the door.

Waiting in every circumstance, even when nothing is at stake, is
painful. The spirit recoils and contracts, and space is left for
thoughts of an inevitable misfortune and for the twinkling vision of the
things which disappear. In a single instant life can completely change
its aspect....

A sweeping draught. It brings in the voice of a young man. I want to
leave. The two Loiseaus hover about him. "What a surprise! How nice!"
They rub their hands. "Come in and sit down!"

It is too late to leave; the stranger is already bowing to me, and the
mingled exclamations pretty well hide my stammering. I am so ashamed of
myself for stammering.

The newcomer seats himself near the fire on the little black chair to
the right of Migo. He wants the lamp to stay unlighted. But it is no
longer the same. Our silence has been routed, and the languor, and the
warmth also....

I am in a good position to observe him. How old? Thirty-four,
thirty-five perhaps. Is he really handsome? Hard to say. He is too dark.
His face is strongly chiseled, his cheeks sunken, his forehead hard as
a hammer. The long line of his jaw lends refinement to his countenance,
which is lit by eyes fearlessly open, in which the gray, in spots, seems
steeped in phosphorous. His gestures are repressed and rather
commanding. He talks little, but when he does talk his fire contrasts
with the rarity of his words, gives them value, makes them seem to issue
all alive from the bowels of the earth, while he sits with his body
upright, as if at a distance, the flicker from the hearth enamelling,
then removing, the burnished black of his hair ... I bethink myself: we
have not yet had tea. I hope it will be just right this evening.

One by one I take out of their hiding-place the cups with the gold
lines, the lovely ones, the only embroidered tea-cloth, the teapot with
the golden spout, and the flowers, wan in the night. I set the luxury of
these things on the table. With my head shrouded in the light-dark and
my shoulders swathed in a fleece of shadow, how good it is to be among
them, screened by my movements, not sitting but standing so that I can
look upon the happy trio. Him especially. For alongside of him, who
hardly speaks, the two Loiseaus, beaming and voluble, seem suddenly tame
and stunted.

A pleasant sight, quite new to me, this group of three faces on which a
common childhood sp