to say, in a loud voice, with a
merry laugh:

"I should have made a poor gallant abbe of the last century, for at night
I can really see nothing. If your cigarette had not served me as a
beacon-light I should have run against the balustrade."

"Ah, it is you, Dorsenne," replied Madame Steno, with a sharpness
contrary to her habitual amiability, which proved to the novelist that
first of all he was the "inconvenient third" of the classical comedies,
then that Hafner had reported his imprudent remarks of the day before.

"So much the better," thought he, "I shall have forewarned her. On
reflection she will be pleased. It is true that at this moment there is
no question of reflection." As he said those words to himself, he talked
aloud of the temperature of the day, of the probabilities of the weather
for the morrow, of Ardea's good-humor. He made, indeed, twenty trifling
remarks, in order to manage to leave the terrace and to leave the lovers
to their tete-a-tete, without causing his withdrawal to become noticeable
by indiscreet haste, as disagreeable as suggestive.

"When may we come to your atelier to see the portrait finished,
Maitland?" he asked, still standing, in order the better to manage his
retreat.

"Finished?" exclaimed the Countess, who added, employing a diminutive
which she had used for several weeks: "Do you then not know that Linco
has again effaced the head?"

"Not the entire head," said the painter, "but the face is to be done
over. You remember, Dorsenne, those two canvases by Pier delta Francesca,
which are at Florence, Duc Federigo d'Urbino and his wife Battista
Sforza. Did you not see them in the same room with La Calomnie by
Botticelli, with a landscape in the background? It is drawn like this,"
and he made a gesture with his thumb, "and that is what I am trying to
obtain, the necessary curve on which all faces depend. There is no better
painter in Italy."

"And Titian and Raphael?" interrupted Madame Steno.

"And the Sienese and the Lorenzetti, of whom you once raved? You wrote to
me of them, with regard to my article on your exposition of 'eighty-six;
do you remember?" inquired the writer.

"Raphael?" replied Maitland.... "Do you wish me to tell you what Raphael
really was? A sublime builder. And Titian? A sublime upholsterer. It is
true, I admired the Sienese very much," he added, turning toward
Dorsenne. "I spent three months in copying the Simone Martini of the
municipality, the Guid