“And if you knew how charming Monsieur Vaudrey is—­a delightful conversationalist—­he has dined excellently—­he was twice served with an entree!”

Marianne listened, but her mind was wandering far away.  She was debating with herself as to when Monsieur de Rosas would appear on that narrow strip of waxed floor before her.

Guy had correctly surmised:  it was Rosas and Rosas only whom this woman was seeking in Sabine’s salon.  She wished to see him again, to talk to him, to tempt destiny.  A fancy.—­A final caprice.  Why not?

Marianne thought that she played a leading part there.  She remembered this Jose very well, having met him more than once in former days with Guy.  A Parisian Castilian, more Parisian than Spanish, he spoke with exquisite finish the classic tongue, and with the free-and-easy manner of a frequenter of the boulevards, chatted in the slang of the pavement or of the greenroom; he was an eminent virtuoso and collector, an author when the desire seized him, but only in his own interest, liberal in his opinions, lavish in his disposition, attractive in his manners; an eager traveller, he had, at thirty years of age, seen all that was to be seen, he had visited India and Japan, drunk camel’s milk under the tents of the Kirgheez, and eaten dates with the Kabyles, and narrated with a sort of appetizing irony, love adventures which might have seemed romantic brag, if it were not that he lessened their improbability by his raillery.  He was a kind of belated Byron, who might have been cured of his romantic tastes by the wounds and contact of reality.

She especially recalled a visit in Guy’s company to Jose at an apartment that the duke had furnished in Rue de Laval.  He occupied a painter’s large studio, draping it with Oriental tapestry, crowding it with knickknacks and panoplies of weapons:  an extravagant luxury,—­something like the embarrassment of riches in a plundered caravansary.  It was there that Jose had regaled Marianne and Guy with coffee served in Turkish fashion, and while they chatted, they had smoked that pale Oriental tobacco, that the Spaniard, quoting some Persian poets, gallantly compared to the perfumed locks of Mademoiselle Kayser.

During her years of hardship, she had many a time recalled that auburn-haired, handsome fellow, with his blue eye, pensive and searching, and lower lip curled disdainfully over his tawny beard trimmed in Charles V. style, as he reclined there, stretched on Hindoo rugs, chanting some monotonous song as slow as the movement of a caravan.

“Isn’t my friend Rosas a delightful fellow?” Guy had asked her.

“Delightful!”

“And clever! and learned! and entertaining! and, what is not amiss, a multi-millionaire!”

Marianne thought of the absolute power, satisfied desires, whims and possible dreams that were linked with that man.  He was a mass of perambulating gold.  How many times she had dreamed, in the mists of her recollection, of that somewhat haughty smile that curled his delicate mustache, and those keen-edged teeth gleaming though his reddish beard, as if greedy to bury themselves deep in flesh!