There was something whimsical in the quick beat of her eyelids and in the subtle quiver of her lips.  “And behold! the same notion had occurred to Azzolati.  Imagine that for this tete-a-tete dinner the creature had got himself up as if for a reception at court.  He displayed a brochette of all sorts of decorations on the lapel of his frac and had a broad ribbon of some order across his shirt front.  An orange ribbon.  Bavarian, I should say.  Great Roman Catholic, Azzolati.  It was always his ambition to be the banker of all the Bourbons in the world.  The last remnants of his hair were dyed jet black and the ends of his moustache were like knitting needles.  He was disposed to be as soft as wax in my hands.  Unfortunately I had had some irritating interviews during the day.  I was keeping down sudden impulses to smash a glass, throw a plate on the floor, do something violent to relieve my feelings.  His submissive attitude made me still more nervous.  He was ready to do anything in the world for me providing that I would promise him that he would never find my door shut against him as long as he lived.  You understand the impudence of it, don’t you?  And his tone was positively abject, too.  I snapped back at him that I had no door, that I was a nomad.  He bowed ironically till his nose nearly touched his plate but begged me to remember that to his personal knowledge I had four houses of my own about the world.  And you know this made me feel a homeless outcast more than ever—­ like a little dog lost in the street—­not knowing where to go.  I was ready to cry and there the creature sat in front of me with an imbecile smile as much as to say ‘here is a poser for you. . . .’  I gnashed my teeth at him.  Quietly, you know . . .  I suppose you two think that I am stupid.”

She paused as if expecting an answer but we made no sound and she continued with a remark.

“I have days like that.  Often one must listen to false protestations, empty words, strings of lies all day long, so that in the evening one is not fit for anything, not even for truth if it comes in one’s way.  That idiot treated me to a piece of brazen sincerity which I couldn’t stand.  First of all he began to take me into his confidence; he boasted of his great affairs, then started groaning about his overstrained life which left him no time for the amenities of existence, for beauty, or sentiment, or any sort of ease of heart.  His heart!  He wanted me to sympathize with his sorrows.  Of course I ought to have listened.  One must pay for service.  Only I was nervous and tired.  He bored me.  I told him at last that I was surprised that a man of such immense wealth should still keep on going like this reaching for more and more.  I suppose he must have been sipping a good deal of wine while we talked and all at once he let out an atrocity which was too much for me.  He had been moaning and sentimentalizing but then suddenly he showed me his fangs.  ‘No,’