Lissac was profoundly stirred and very greatly puzzled.  To call on him:  that implied a need of him.  But there was no attempt to find the marker at the place where the romance had been interrupted:  therefore the visit was not to renew the relations that had been severed, yet not broken.

What, then, brought this creature, still charming and giddy, whose heart was gnawed and wrung with grief?  And was she the woman—­Guy knew her so well!—­to return thus, only to conjure up the vanished recollections, to communicate the secret of her present sorrows and to permit Lissac to inhale the odor of a departed perfume, more airy than the blue smoke-wreaths that escaped from her cigarette?

After entrusting Guy with the secret of her yearning for solitude, she again indulged in her sickly smile, and still looking at Guy: 

“You are, I am told, a constant guest at Sabine Marsy’s receptions?” she said abruptly.

“Yes,” replied Lissac.  “But I have no great liking for political salons.”

“It is a political centre, and yet not, seemingly.  It is about to become a scientific one, if one may believe the reporters—­Monsieur de Rosas is announced.—­By the way, my dear Guy, you still see Monsieur de Rosas!”

While Marianne uttered this name with an indifferent tone, she slightly bent her head in order to scrutinize Guy.

He did not reply at once, seeking first to discover what object Marianne had in speaking to him about De Rosas.  In a vague way he surmised that the great Castilian noble counted for something in Marianne’s visit.

“I always see him when he is in Paris,” he said after a moment’s pause.

“Then you will see him very soon, for he will arrive to-morrow.”

“Who told you that?”

“The newspapers.  You don’t read the newspapers, then?—­He is returning from the East.  Madame Marsy is bent on his narrating his travels, on the occasion of a special soiree.  A lecture!  Our Rosas must have altered immensely.  He was wild enough of old.”

“A shy fellow, which is quite different.  But,” asked Lissac after a moment, “what about Rosas?”

“Tell me, in the first place, that you know perfectly well that he will arrive to-morrow.”

“I know it through the reporters, as you say.  To-day, it is through the reporters that one learns news of one’s friends.”

“The important fact is that you know him, and it is because I am particularly anxious to hear Monsieur de Rosas that I come to ask you to present me at Madame Marsy’s.”

“Oh! that is it?” Guy began.

“Yes, that is it.  I am weary.  I am crazy over the Orient.  You remember Felicien David’s Desert that I used to play for you on the piano?  I would like to hear this story of travel.  It would make me forget Paris.”

“You shall hear it, my dear Marianne.  Madame Marsy asked me to introduce Vaudrey to her the other evening.  You ask me to present you to Madame Marsy.  I am both crimp and introducer; but I am delighted to introduce you to a salon that you will, I trust, find less gloomy than your little room of the Jardin des Plantes.  In fact, I thought you were one of Sabine Marsy’s friends.  Did I dream so?”