had laid her hat aside; I could see a faint down like the bloom of
fruit softening the silken contours of a cheek itself so delicate.
There was a pathetic charm about her face with its double cluster of
fair hair; her brilliant gray eyes were veiled by a mist of tears; her
nose, delicately carved as a Roman cameo, with its quivering nostrils;
her little mouth, like a child's even now; her long queenly throat,
with the veins standing out upon it; her chin, flushed for the moment
by some secret despair; the pink tips of her ears, the hands that
trembled under her gloves, everything about her told of violent
feeling. The feverish twitching of her eyebrows betrayed her pain. She
looked sublime.

"Her first words had crushed du Bruel. She looked at us both, with
that penetrating, impenetrable cat-like glance which only actresses
and great ladies can use. Then she held out her hand to her husband.

"'Poor dear, you had scarcely gone before I blamed myself a thousand
times over. It seemed to me that I had been horribly ungrateful. I
told myself that I had been unkind.--Was I very unkind?' she asked,
turning to me.--'Why not receive your friends? Is it not your house?
Do you want to know the reason of it all? Well, I was afraid that I
was not loved; and indeed I was half-way between repentance and the
shame of going back. I read the newspapers, and saw that there was a
first night at the Varietes, and I thought you had meant to give the
dinner to a collaborator. Left to myself, I gave way, I dressed to
hurry out after you--poor pet.'

"Du Bruel looked at me triumphantly, not a vestige of a recollection
of his orations _contra Tullia_ in his mind.