language, this reserve of
clothing, these poses of the weary dove. He admired the exaltation of
her soul and the lace on her petticoat. Besides, was she not "a lady"
and a married woman--a real mistress, in fine?

By the diversity of her humour, in turn mystical or mirthful, talkative,
taciturn, passionate, careless, she awakened in him a thousand desires,
called up instincts or memories. She was the mistress of all the novels,
the heroine of all the dramas, the vague "she" of all the volumes
of verse. He found again on her shoulder the amber colouring of the
"Odalisque Bathing"; she had the long waist of feudal chatelaines, and
she resembled the "Pale Woman of Barcelona." But above all she was the
Angel!

Often looking at her, it seemed to him that his soul, escaping towards
her, spread like a wave about the outline of her head, and descended
drawn down into the whiteness of her breast. He knelt on the ground
before her, and with both elbows on her knees looked at her with a
smile, his face upturned.

She bent over him, and murmured, as if choking with intoxication--

"Oh, do not move! do not speak! look at me! Something so sweet comes
from your eyes that helps me so much!"

She called him "child." "Child, do you love me?"

And she did not listen for his answer in the haste of her lips that
fastened to his mouth.

On the clock there was a bronze cupid, who smirked as he bent his arm
beneath a golden garland. They had laughed at it many a time, but when
they had to part everything seemed serious to them.

Motionless in front of each other, they kept repeating, "Till Thursday,
till Thursday."

Suddenly she seized his head between her hands, kissed him hurriedly on
the forehead, crying, "Adieu!" and rushed down the stairs.

She went to a hairdresser's in the Rue de la Comedie to have her hair
arranged. Night fell; the gas was lighted in the shop. She heard the
bell at the theatre calling the mummers to the performance, and she saw,
passing opposite, men with white faces and women in faded gowns going in
at the stage-door.

It was hot in the room, small, and too low where the stove was hissing
in the midst of wigs and pomades. The smell of the tongs, together with
the greasy hands that handled her head, soon stunned her, and she dozed
a little in her wrapper. Often, as he did her hair, the man offered her
tickets for a masked ball.

Then she went away. She went up the streets; reached the Croix-Rouge,
put o