Marianne evidently understood what was passing in Guy’s mind.  She smiled strangely.  Buried in the armchair, whose back supported her own, and half-bending her fair neck that reclined on the lace-covered head-rest, she looked at Lissac fixedly with an odd expression, the sidelong glance of a woman, that seems to be her keenest scrutiny.

Through her half-closed lashes he seemed to feel that a malicious glance embraced him.  The mobile nostrils of her delicate nose dilated with a nervous trembling that intensified the mocking smile betrayed by her curling lips.  Her hands were resting upon her plump arms, and with a trembling motion of the fingers beat a feverish little march as if she were playing a scale on a keyboard.

Guy sought to evoke from the well-set, gracefully reclining form, from the half-sly and half-concealed glance, from the palpitating nostrils, something that reminded him of his former ecstasies.  Again he saw, shadowed by the chin, that part of her neck where he loved to bury his brow and to rest his lips, greedily, lingeringly, as when one sips a liqueur.  A strange emotion seized him.  All that had not yet been gratified of his shattered, but not wholly destroyed love, surged within him.

Were it fancy or reminiscence, beside this woman he still felt as of old, a feeling that oppressed his heart and caused him that delightful sensation of uneasiness to which he had been a stranger in connection with his many later easy love adventures.  A light, penetrating and sweet odor floated around Marianne, reminding Lissac of the intoxicating perfume of vanished days, an irritating odor as of new-mown hay.

He said nothing, while she awaited his remarks with curiosity.  Guy’s mute interrogation possibly embarrassed her, for she suddenly shook her head and rose to her feet.

“May one smoke here?” she said, as she opened a Russia leather cigarette-case bearing her monogram.

“What next?” said Guy, lighting a sponge steeped in alcohol that stood in a silver holder and offering it to Marianne.

She quickly closed her fine teeth on the end of the paper cigarette that she had rolled between her fingers and lighted it at the flame.  The gleam of the alcohol brightened her eyes and slightly flushed her pale cheeks, which Guy regarded with strange feelings.

“Your invention is an odd one!” she said, as she returned him the little sponge upon which a tongue of blue flame played.

He extinguished it, and abandoning himself to the disturbing charm of reminiscences, watched Marianne who was already half-enveloped in a light cloud of smoke.