“How annoying!” groaned Marguerite.  “Why did we ever come to this place!”

The two scrutinized each other carefully, wishing to see exactly what transformation Time had wrought.

“You are darker than ever,” she said.  “You look like a man of the sea.”

Julio was finding her even lovelier than before, and felt sure that possessing her was well worth all the contrarieties which had brought about his trip to South America.  She was taller than he, with an elegantly proportioned slenderness.  “She has the musical step,” Desnoyers had told himself, when seeing her in his imagination; and now, on beholding her again, the first thing that he admired was her rhythmic tread, light and graceful as she passed through the garden seeking another seat.  Her features were not regular but they had a piquant fascination—­a true Parisian face.  Everything that had been invented for the embellishment of feminine charm was used about her person with the most exquisite fastidiousness.  She had always lived for herself.  Only a few months before had she abdicated a part of this sweet selfishness, sacrificing reunions, teas, and calls in order to give Desnoyers some of the afternoon hours.

Stylish and painted like a priceless doll, with no loftier ambition than to be a model, interpreting with personal elegance the latest confections of the modistes, she was at last experiencing the same preoccupations and joys as other women, creating for herself an inner life.  The nucleus of this new life, hidden under her former frivolity, was Desnoyers.  Just as she was imagining that she had reorganized her existence—­adjusting the satisfactions of worldly elegance to the delights of love in intimate secrecy—­a fulminating catastrophe (the intervention of her husband whose possible appearance she seemed to have overlooked) had disturbed her thoughtless happiness.  She who was accustomed to think herself the centre of the universe, imagining that events ought to revolve around her desires and tastes, had suffered this cruel surprise with more astonishment than grief.

“And you, how do you think I look?” Marguerite queried.

“I must tell you that the fashion has changed.  The sheath skirt has passed away.  Now it is worn short and with more fullness.”

Desnoyers had to interest himself in her apparel with the same devotion, mixing his appreciation of the latest freak of the fashion-monger with his eulogies of Marguerite’s beauty.

“Have you thought much about me?” she continued.  “You have not been unfaithful to me a single time?  Not even once? . . .  Tell me the truth; you know I can always tell when you are lying.”

“I have always thought of you,” he said putting his hand on his heart, as if he were swearing before a judge.

And he said it roundly, with an accent of truth, since in his infidelities—­now completely forgotten—­the memory of Marguerite had always been present.