he arts mechanical and of all the arts liberal. She is the work
of everybody, she belongs to the world."

Therese closed the book and thought that these ideas were only the dreams
of novelists who did not know life. She knew very well that there was in
reality neither a Carmel of passion nor a chain of love, nor a beautiful
and terrible vocation against which the predestined one resisted in vain;
she knew very well that love was only a brief intoxication from which one
recovered a little sadder. And yet, perhaps, she did not know everything;
perhaps there were loves in which one was deliciously lost. She put out
her lamp. The dreams of her first youth came back to her.

CHAPTER VI

A DISTINGUISHED RELICT

It was raining. Madame Martin-Belleme saw confusedly through the glass of
her coupe the multitude of passing umbrellas, like black turtles under
the watery skies. She was thinking. Her thoughts were gray and
indistinct, like the aspect of the streets and the squares.

She no longer knew why the idea had come to her to spend a month with
Miss Bell. Truly, she never had known. The idea had been like a spring,
at first hidden by leaves, and now forming the current of a deep and
rapid stream. She remembered that Tuesday night at dinner she had said
suddenly that she wished to go, but she could not remember the first
flush of that desire. It was not the wish to act toward Robert Le Menil
as he was acting toward her. Doubtless she thought it excellent to go
travelling in Italy while he went fox-hunting. This seemed to her a fair
arrangement. Robert, who was always pleased to see her when he came back,
would not find her on his return. She thought this would be right. She
had not thought of it at first. And since then she had thought little of
it, and really she was not going for the pleasure of making him grieve.
She had against him a thought less piquant, and more harsh. She did not
wish to see him soon. He had become to her almost a stranger. He seemed
to her a man like others--better than most others--good-looking,
estimable, and who did not displease her; but he did not preoccupy her.
Suddenly he had gone out of her life. She could not remember how he had
become mingled with it. The idea of belonging to him shocked her. The
thought that they might meet again in the small apartment of the Rue
Spontini was so painful to her that she discarded it at once. She
preferred to think that an unforeseen event would preve