Ah, the lesson was hard and decisive.  For having one time hoped so much, what regrets, what a tumble!  Decidedly, Reality does not pardon him who despises her; she avenges herself by shattering the dream and trampling it and casting the fragments into a cesspool.

“Don’t be vexed, dear, because it is taking me so long,” said Mme. Chantelouve behind the curtain.

He thought crudely, “I wish you would get to hell out of here,” and aloud he asked politely if she had need of his services.

“She was so mysterious, so enticing,” he resumed to himself.  “Her eyes, remote, deep as space, and reflecting cemeteries and festivals at the same time.  And she has shown herself up for all she is, within an hour.  I have seen a new Hyacinthe, talking like a silly little milliner in heat.  All the nastinesses of women unite in her to exasperate me.”

After a thoughtful silence he concluded, “I must be young indeed to have lost my head the way I did.”

As if echoing his thought, Mme. Chantelouve, coming out through the portiere, laughed nervously and said, “A woman of my age doing a mad thing like that!” She looked at him, and though he forced a smile she understood.

“You will sleep tonight,” she said, sadly, alluding to Durtal’s former complaints of sleeplessness on her account.

He begged her to sit down and warm herself, but she said she was not cold.

“Why, in spite of the warmth of the room you were cold as ice!”

“Oh, I am always that way.  Winter and summer my flesh is chilly.”

He thought that in August this frigid body might be agreeable, but now!

He offered her some bonbons, which she refused, then she said she would take a sip of the alkermes, which he poured into a tiny silver goblet.  She took just a drop, and amicably they discussed the taste of this preparation, in which she recognized an aroma of clove, tempered by flower of cinnamon moistened with distillate of rose water.

Then he became silent.

“My poor dear,” she said, “how I should love him if he were more confiding and not always on his guard.”

He asked her to explain herself.

“Why, I mean that you can’t forget yourself and simply let yourself be loved.  Alas, you were reasoning all the time—­”

“I was not!”

She kissed him tenderly.  “You see I love you, anyway.”  And he was surprised to see how sad and moved she looked, and he observed a sort of frightened gratitude in her eyes.

“She is easily satisfied,” he said to himself.

“What are you thinking about?”

“You!”

She sighed.  Then, “What time is it?”

“Half past ten.”

“I must go.  He is waiting for me.  No, don’t say anything—­”

She passed her hands over her cheeks.  He seized her gently by the waist and kissed her, holding her thus enlaced until they were at the door.