“I’m talking very freely to you,” he said.

“My dear fellow,” I burst out, “do let me see her portrait.”

He shook his head.

“Unfortunately her portrait is all over Paris.  She likes it so.  But I prefer to have no portrait myself.  My feeling is—­”

At that moment the valet opened the door and we heard vivacious voices in the corridor.

“She is here,” said Octave Boissy, in a whisper suddenly dramatic.  He stood up; I also.  His expression had profoundly changed.  He controlled his gestures and his attitude, but he could not control his eye.  And when I saw that glance I understood what he meant by “living.”  I understood that, for him, neither fame nor artistic achievement nor wealth had any value in his life.  His life consisted in one thing only.

“Eh bien, Blanche!” he murmured amorously.

Blanche Lemonnier invaded the room with arrogance.  She was the odious creature whose departure in her automobile had so upset my arrival.

THE LETTER AND THE LIE

I

As he hurried from his brougham through the sombre hall to his study, leaving his secretary far in the rear, he had already composed the first sentence of his address to the United Chambers of Commerce of the Five Towns; his mind was full of it; he sat down at once to his vast desk, impatient to begin dictating.  Then it was that he perceived the letter, lodged prominently against the gold and onyx inkstand given to him on his marriage by the Prince and Princess of Wales.  The envelope was imperfectly fastened, or not fastened at all, and the flap came apart as he fingered it nervously.

“Dear Cloud,—­This is to say good-bye, finally—­”

He stopped.  Fear took him at the heart, as though he had been suddenly told by a physician that he must submit to an operation endangering his life.  And he skipped feverishly over the four pages to the signature, “Yours sincerely, Gertrude.”

The secretary entered.

“I must write one or two private letters first,” he said to the secretary.  “Leave me.  I’ll ring.”

“Yes, sir.  Shall I take your overcoat?”

“No, no.”

A discreet closing of the door.

“—­finally.  I can’t stand it any longer.  Cloud, I’m gone to Italy.  I shall use the villa at Florence, and trust you to leave me alone.  You must tell our friends.  You can start with the Bargraves to-night.  I’m sure they’ll agree with me it’s for the best—­”

It seemed to him that this letter was very like the sort of letter that gets read in the Divorce Court and printed in the papers afterwards; and he felt sick.

“—­for the best.  Everybody will know in a day or two, and then in another day or two the affair will be forgotten.  It’s difficult to write naturally under the circumstances, so all I’ll say is that we aren’t suited to each other, Cloud.  Ten years of marriage has amply proved that, though I knew it six—­seven—­years ago.  You haven’t guessed that you’ve been killing me all these years; but it is so—­”