He jumped from his chair.  There was a gentle ring.  “Not nine o’clock yet.  It isn’t she,” he murmured, opening the door.

He squeezed her hands and thanked her for being so punctual.

She said she was not feeling well.  “I came only because I didn’t want to keep you waiting in vain.”

His heart sank.

“I have a fearful headache,” she said, passing her gloved hands over her forehead.

He took her furs and motioned her to the armchair.  Prepared to follow his plan of attack, he sat down on the stool, but she refused the armchair and took a seat beside the table.  Rising, he bent over her and caught hold of her fingers.

“Your hand is burning,” she said.

“Yes, a bit of fever, because I get so little sleep.  If you knew how much I have thought about you!  Now I have you here, all to myself,” and he spoke of that persistent odour of cinnamon, faint, distant, expiring amid the less definite odours which her gloves exhaled, “well,” and he sniffed her fingers, “you will leave some of yourself here when you go away.”

She rose, sighing.  “I see you have a cat.  What is his name?”

“Mouche.”

She called to the cat, which fled precipitately.

“Mouche!  Mouche!” Durtal called, but Mouche took refuge under the bed and refused to come out.  “You see he is rather bashful.  He has never seen a woman.”

“Oh, would you try to make me think you have never received a woman here?”

He swore that he never had, that she was the first....

“And you were not really anxious that this—­first—­should come?”

He blushed.  “Why do you say that?”

She made a vague gesture.  “I want to tease you,” she said, sitting down in the armchair.  “To tell you the truth, I do not know why I like to ask you such presumptuous questions.”

He had sat down in front of her.  So now, at last, the scene was set as he wished and he must begin the attack.  His knee touched hers.

“You know,” he said, “that you cannot presume here.  You have claims on—­”

“No, I haven’t and I want none.”

“Why?”

“Because....  Listen,” and her voice became grave and firm.  “The more I reflect, the more inclined I am to ask you, for heaven’s sake, not to destroy our dream.  And then....  Do you want me to be frank, so frank that I shall doubtless seem a monster of selfishness?  Well, personally, I do not wish to spoil the—­the—­what shall I say?—­the extreme happiness our relation gives me.  I know I explain badly and confusedly, but this is the way it is:  I possess you when and how I please, just as, for a long time, I have possessed Byron, Baudelaire, Gerard de Nerval, those I love—­”

“You mean ...?”

“That I have only to desire them, to desire you, before I go to sleep....”

“And?”

“And you would be inferior to my chimera, to the Durtal I adore, whose caresses make my nights delirious!”