Marianne Kayser was evidently waiting for Sulpice.  She received him in her little, brilliantly-lighted salon, superb amid these lights, in a red satin robe de chambre that lent a strange seductiveness to her bare arms and neck which shone with a pale and pearly lustre beneath the light.

Vaudrey felt infinitely moved, almost painfully though deliciously stirred, as he always did when in the presence of this lovely creature.

She extended her hand to him, saying in a singular tone that astonished him: 

“Bonjour, vous!”

“Well!” she said at once, pointing to a journal which was lying on the carpet, “is there anything new?”

“Yes,” he said.  “But what is that to me?  I don’t think of that when I am near you!”

“Oh! besides, my dear,” Marianne continued, “your darling sin has not been to think of two things at one time!  I don’t understand anything of politics, it bothers me.  I have been advised, however, that you have been thrashed by that Granet!”

“Thrashed, yes,” said Sulpice, laughing, “you use peculiar phrases!—­”

“Topical ones.  I am of the times!  But it appears that one must read the journals to learn about you.  I am going to tell you some news however, before it appears in print.”

“That interests me?”

“Perhaps, but it most assuredly interests me!”

“Important news?” asked Sulpice.

“Important or great, as you will!”

He nibbled his blond moustache nervously.

Guy had not deceived him.

“Then I think I know your news, my dear Marianne!”

“Tell me!” she said, as she stretched herself on a divan, her arms crossed, looking ravishingly lovely in her red gown.

He sought some forcible phrase that would crush her, but he could find none.  His only desire was to take that fair face in his hands and to fasten his lips thereon.

Marianne smiled maliciously.

“It is true then,” Vaudrey exclaimed, “that you love Monsieur de Rosas?”

“There, you are well-informed!  It is strange!  Perhaps that is because you are no longer a minister!”

“You love Rosas?”

“Yes, and I am marrying him.  I have the honor to announce to you my marriage to Monsieur le Duc Jose de Rosas, Marquis de Fuentecarral.  It surprises me, but it is so!—­I have known days when I have not had six sous to take the omnibus, and now I am to be a duchess!  This does not seem to please you?  Are you selfish, then?”

Stretched on her divan, her neck and arms sparkling under the light of the sconces, she appeared to make sport of Vaudrey’s stupefaction as he looked at her almost with fright.

“Now, my dear,” she said curtly, but politely, as she toyed with a ring on her finger, “this is why I desired to see you to-day.  It is to tell you that if you care to remain friendly on terms that forbid sensual enjoyment, which is not objectionable in putting a lock on the past, you may visit the Duchesse de Rosas just as you have Mademoiselle Kayser.  But if you are bent on finding in the Duchesse de Rosas the good-natured girl that I have been toward you, and you are quite capable of it, for you are a sentimental fellow, then it will be useless to even appear to have ever known each other.  I am turning the key on my life. Crac!  Bonsoir, Sulpice!”