LITMIR.BIZ

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the arguments urged by Fauchery, who spoke of a dinner where the Prince of Scots, the son of a queen, had sat down beside an ex-music-hall singer, the count only emphasized his refusal. In so doing, he allowed himself, despite his great politeness, to be guilty of an irritated gesture.

      Georges and La Faloise, standing in front of each other drinking their tea, had overheard the two or three phrases exchanged in their immediate neighborhood.

      “Jove, it's at Nana's then,” murmured La Faloise. “I might have expected as much!”

      Georges said nothing, but he was all aflame. His fair hair was in disorder; his blue eyes shone like tapers, so fiercely had the vice, which for some days past had surrounded him, inflamed and stirred his blood. At last he was going to plunge into all that he had dreamed of!

      “I don't know the address,” La Faloise resumed.

      “She lives on a third floor in the Boulevard Haussmann, between the Rue de l'Arcade and the Rue Pesquier,” said Georges all in a breath.

      And when the other looked at him in much astonishment, he added, turning very red and fit to sink into the ground with embarrassment and conceit:

      “I'm of the party. She invited me this morning.”

      But there was a great stir in the drawing room, and Vandeuvres and Fauchery could not continue pressing the count. The Marquis de Chouard had just come in, and everyone was anxious to greet him. He had moved painfully forward, his legs failing under him, and he now stood in the middle of the room with pallid face and eyes blinking, as though he had just come out of some dark alley and were blinded by the brightness of the lamps.

      “I scarcely hoped to see you tonight, Father,” said the countess. “I should have been anxious till the morning.”

      He looked at her without answering, as a man might who fails to understand. His nose, which loomed immense on his shorn face, looked like a swollen pimple, while his lower lip hung down. Seeing him such a wreck, Mme. Hugon, full of kind compassion, said pitying things to him.

      “You work too hard. You ought to rest yourself. At our age we ought to leave work to the young people.”

      “Work! Ah yes, to be sure, work!” he stammered at last. “Always plenty of work.”

      He began to pull himself together, straightening up his bent figure and passing his hand, as was his wont, over his scant gray hair, of which a few locks strayed behind his ears.

      “At what are you working as late as this?” asked Mme. du Joncquoy. “I thought you were at the financial minister's reception?”

      But the countess intervened with:

      “My father had to study the question of a projected law.”

      “Yes, a projected law,” he said; “exactly so, a projected law. I shut myself up for that reason. It refers to work in factories, and I was anxious for a proper observance of the Lord's day of rest. It is really shameful that the government is unwilling to act with vigor in the matter. Churches are growing empty; we are running headlong to ruin.”

      Vandeuvres had exchanged glances with Fauchery. They both happened to be behind the marquis, and they were scanning him suspiciously. When Vandeuvres found an opportunity to take him aside and to speak to him about the good-looking creature he was in the habit of taking down into the country, the old man affected extreme surprise. Perhaps someone had seen him with the Baroness Decker, at whose house at Viroflay he sometimes spent a day or so. Vandeuvres's sole vengeance was an abrupt question:

      “Tell me, where have you been straying to? Your elbow is covered with cobwebs and plaster.”

      “My elbow,” he muttered, slightly disturbed. “Yes indeed, it's true. A speck or two, I must have come in for them on my way down from my office.”

      Several people were taking their departure. It was close on midnight. Two footmen were noiselessly removing the empty cups and the plates with cakes. In front of the hearth the ladies had re-formed and, at the same time, narrowed their circle and were chatting more carelessly than before in the languid atmosphere peculiar to the close of a party. The very room was going to sleep, and slowly creeping shadows were cast by its walls. It was then Fauchery spoke of departure. Yet he once more forgot his intention at sight of the Countess Sabine. She was resting from her cares as hostess, and as she sat in her wonted seat, silent, her eyes fixed on a log which was turning into embers, her face appeared so white and so impassable that doubt again possessed him. In the glow of the fire the small black hairs on the mole at the corner of her lip became white. It was Nana's very mole, down to the color of the hair. He could not refrain from whispering something about it in Vandeuvres's ear. Gad, it was true; the other had never noticed it before. And both men continued this comparison of Nana and the countess. They discovered a vague resemblance about the chin and the mouth, but the eyes were not at all alike. Then, too, Nana had a good-natured expression, while with the countess it was hard to decide—she might have been a cat, sleeping with claws withdrawn and paws stirred by a scarce-perceptible nervous quiver.

      “All the same, one could have her,” declared Fauchery.

      Vandeuvres stripped her at a glance.

      “Yes, one could, all the same,” he said. “But I think nothing of the thighs, you know. Will you bet she has no thighs?”

      He stopped, for Fauchery touched him briskly on the arm and showed him Estelle, sitting close to them on her footstool. They had raised their voices without noticing her, and she must have overheard them. Nevertheless, she continued sitting there stiff and motionless, not a hair having lifted on her thin neck, which was that of a girl who has shot up all too quickly. Thereupon they retired three or four paces, and Vandeuvres vowed that the countess was a very honest woman. Just then voices were raised in front of the hearth. Mme. du Joncquoy was saying:

      “I was willing to grant you that Monsieur de Bismarck was perhaps a witty man. Only, if you go as far as to talk of genius—”

      The ladies had come round again to their earliest topic of conversation.

      “What the deuce! Still Monsieur de Bismarck!” muttered Fauchery. “This time I make my escape for good and all.”

      “Wait a bit,” said Vandeuvres, “we must have a definite no from the count.”

      The Count Muffat was talking to his father-in-law and a certain serious-looking gentleman. Vandeuvres drew him away and renewed the invitation, backing it up with the information that he was to be at the supper himself. A man might go anywhere; no one could think of suspecting evil where at most there could only be curiosity. The count listened to these arguments with downcast eyes and expressionless face. Vandeuvres felt him to be hesitating when the Marquis de Chouard approached with a look of interrogation. And when the latter was informed of the question in hand and Fauchery had invited him in his turn, he looked at his son-in-law furtively. There ensued an embarrassed silence, but both men encouraged one another and would doubtless have ended by accepting had not Count Muffat perceived M. Venot's gaze fixed upon him. The little old man was no longer smiling; his face was cadaverous, his eyes bright and keen as steel.

      “No,” replied the count directly, in so decisive a tone that further insistence became impossible.

      Then the marquis refused with even greater severity of expression. He talked morality. The aristocratic classes ought to set a good example. Fauchery smiled and shook hands with Vandeuvres. He did not wait for him and took his departure immediately, for he was due at his newspaper office.

      “At Nana's at midnight, eh?”

      La Faloise retired too. Steiner had made his bow to the countess. Other men followed them, and the same phrase went round—“At midnight, at Nana's”—as they went to get their overcoats in the anteroom. Georges, who could not leave without his mother, had stationed himself at the door, where he gave the exact address. “Third floor, door on your left.” Yet before going out Fauchery gave a final glance. Vandeuvres had again resumed his position among the ladies and

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