“Yes; what does that mean?”

“The Rue de la Paix, he says, is a large street, and a grand street, but it certainly doesn’t awaken the gracious and noble thoughts that the Rue Royale suggests to every sensitive mind; nor has it the dignity of the Place Vendome.  The Place de la Bourse, he says, is in the daytime babble and prostitution, but at night it is beautiful.  At two o’clock in the morning, by moonlight, it is a dream of old Greece.”

“I don’t see much in that.  What you said about the villas was quite as good.”

Fearing that the conversation lacked a familiar and personal interest, he sought a transition, an idea by which he could connect it with Evelyn herself.  With this object he called her attention to two young men who, he pretended, reminded him of Rastignac and Morny.  That woman in the mail phaeton was an incipient Madame Marneffe; that dark woman now looking at them with ardent, amorous eyes might be an Esther.

“We’re all creatures of Balzac’s imagination.  You,” he said, turning a little so that he might see her better, “are intensely Balzacian.”

“Do I remind you of one of his characters?” Evelyn became more keenly interested.  “Which one?”

“You are more like a character he might have painted than anyone I can think of in the Human Comedy.  He certainly would have been interested in your temperament.  But I can’t think which of his women is like you.  You are more like the adorable Lucien; that is to say, up to the present.”

“Who was Lucien?”

“He was the young poet whom all Paris fell in love with.  He came up to Paris with a married woman; I think they came from Angouleme.  I haven’t read Lost Illusions for twenty years.  She and he were the stars in the society of some provincial town, but when they arrived in Paris each thought the other very common and countrified.  He compares her with Madame d’Espard; she compares him with Rastignac; Balzac completes the picture with a touch of pure genius—­’They forgot that six months would transform them both into exquisite Parisians.’  How good that is, what wonderful insight into life!”

“And do they become Parisians?”

“Yes, and then they both regret that they broke off—­”

“Could they not begin it again?”

“No; it is rarely that a liaison can be begun again—­life is too hurried.  We may not go back; the past may never become the present—­ghosts come between.”

“Then if I broke it off with you, or you broke it off with me, it would be for ever?”

“Do not let us discuss such unpleasant possibilities;” and he continued to search the Human Comedy for a woman resembling Evelyn.  “You are essentially Balzacian—­all interesting things are—­but I cannot remember any woman in the Human Comedy like you—­Honorine, perhaps.”

“What does she do?”

“She’s a married woman who has left her husband for a lover who very soon deserts her.  Her husband tries in vain to love other women, but his wife holds his affections and he makes every effort to win her back.  The story is mainly an account of these efforts.”