“That suits you well,” she continued.  “Orders on your coat are like diamonds in our ears—­they are of no use, but they are pretty.”

She had passed a red rosette through the buttonhole, and lowering his head, Guy saw her fair brow, her blond locks within reach of his lips.  They exhaled a perfume—­the odor of hay, that he liked so well—­and those woman’s fingers on his breast, the fingers of the woman whom he had mocked the previous night at the theatre, caused him a disturbing sensation.  He gently disengaged himself, while Marianne repeated:  “That suits you well—­” Then her hand fell on his and she pressed his fingers in her burning and soft palm and said, as she half lowered her head toward him: 

“Do you know why I have come?  You know that I am silly.  Well, naughty one, the other evening in that box when you punished me with your irony, all my love for you returned!—­Ah! how foolish we are, we women!  Tell me, Guy, do you recall the glorious days we have spent?  Those recollections retain their place in the heart!  Has the idea of living again as in the past never occurred to you?  It was so sweet!”

Lissac laughed a little nervously and trembled slightly, trying to joke but feeling himself suddenly weakening in the presence of this woman whose wrath or contemptuous smile he preferred.

He recognized all the vanished perfumes.  The sensation of trembling delight that years had borne away now returned to him.  The silent pressure of the hands recalled nights of distraction.  He half shut his eyes, a sudden madness overcame him, although he was sufficiently calm to say to himself that she had an end in view, this woman’s coming to him, loveless, to speak of love to him, herself unmoved by the senses, to awaken vanished feelings, to offer herself with the irresistible skill of desire:  a dead passion born of caprice.

“Nevertheless, it is you who left me, satiated after taking from me all that you were capable of loving,” she said.  “Do you know one thing, however, Guy?  There is more than one woman in a woman.  There are as many as she possesses of passions or joys, and the Marianne of to-day is so different from the one who was your mistress formerly!—­You would never leave me, if you were my lover now!”

She tempted this man whose curiosity was aroused, accustomed as he was to casual and easy love adventures.  He foresaw danger, but there within reach of his lips were experienced kisses, an ardent supplicant, a proffered delight, full of burning promise.  In a sort of anger, he seized the woman who recalled all the past joys, uttered the well-known cries, and who suddenly, as in a nervous attack, deliriously plucked the covering from her bosom, and bared with the boldness of beauty that knows itself to be irresistible, her white arms, her brilliant, untrammeled breasts, the sparkling splendor of her flesh, with her golden hair unfastened, as she used to appear lying on a pillow of fair silk,