And she launched into extraordinary praise of Daguenet.  The count had again taken her hands; he no longer refused now; he would see about it, he said, they would talk the matter over.  By and by, when he spoke of going to bed, she sank her voice and excused herself.  It was impossible; she was not well.  If he loved her at all he would not insist!  Nevertheless, he was obstinate; he refused to go away, and she was beginning to give in when she met Satin’s eyes once more.  Then she grew inflexible.  No, the thing was out of the question!  The count, deeply moved and with a look of suffering, had risen and was going in quest of his hat.  But in the doorway he remembered the set of sapphires; he could feel the case in his pocket.  He had been wanting to hide it at the bottom of the bed so that when she entered it before him she should feel it against her legs.  Since dinnertime he had been meditating this little surprise like a schoolboy, and now, in trouble and anguish of heart at being thus dismissed, he gave her the case without further ceremony.

“What is it?” she queried.  “Sapphires?  Dear me!  Oh yes, it’s that set.  How sweet you are!  But I say, my darling, d’you believe it’s the same one?  In the shopwindow it made a much greater show.”

That was all the thanks he got, and she let him go away.  He noticed Satin stretched out silent and expectant, and with that he gazed at both women and without further insistence submitted to his fate and went downstairs.  The hall door had not yet closed when Satin caught Nana round the waist and danced and sang.  Then she ran to the window.

“Oh, just look at the figure he cuts down in the street!” The two women leaned upon the wrought-iron window rail in the shadow of the curtains.  One o’clock struck.  The Avenue de Villiers was deserted, and its double file of gas lamps stretched away into the darkness of the damp March night through which great gusts of wind kept sweeping, laden with rain.  There were vague stretches of land on either side of the road which looked like gulfs of shadow, while scaffoldings round mansions in process of construction loomed upward under the dark sky.  They laughed uncontrollably as they watched Muffat’s rounded back and glistening shadow disappearing along the wet sidewalk into the glacial, desolate plains of new Paris.  But Nana silenced Satin.

“Take care; there are the police!”

Thereupon they smothered their laughter and gazed in secret fear at two dark figures walking with measured tread on the opposite side of the avenue.  Amid all her luxurious surroundings, amid all the royal splendors of the woman whom all must obey, Nana still stood in horror of the police and did not like to hear them mentioned any oftener than death.  She felt distinctly unwell when a policeman looked up at her house.  One never knew what such people might do!  They might easily take them for loose women if they heard them laughing at that hour of the night.  Satin, with a little shudder, had squeezed herself up against Nana.  Nevertheless, the pair stayed where they were and were soon interested in the approach of a lantern, the light of which danced over the puddles in the road.  It was an old ragpicker woman who was busy raking in the gutters.  Satin recognized her.