Jose felt himself grow pale in the presence of this exquisite creature whose image, treasured in the depths of his heart, he had borne with him wherever his fancy had led him to travel.  He gazed at her as a man looks at a woman whom he has long desired, but whom some urgent necessity has kept out of his way, and who by chance is suddenly brought near him, fate putting within our reach the dream—­

She was prettier than ever, graceful and blooming, “more matured,” like a fruit whose color is more tempting to the appetite.  Sabine had just before very naturally brought these two together and instinctively, as if they had to exchange many confidences, they had immediately sought a retired spot away from that crowd and were seated there in that salon where Vaudrey, already half-jealous, guessed that Marianne would be.

Yes, indeed, she had many confidences to impart to that man who had suddenly entered the sphere of her life and had suddenly disappeared, remaining during several years as if dead to her.  It seemed to her as they sat face to face that this flight of wasted time had made her still younger, and Rosas, notwithstanding his cold demeanor, allowed his former passion to be divined:  the women one loves unmask one’s secret before a man can himself explain what he feels.

She felt a profound, sincere joy.  She recalled a similar conversation with Jose in his studio, that Oriental corner hidden in the Rue de Laval.  The Japanese satin enhanced the illusion.

“Do you know that it seems to me,” she said, “that I have been dreaming, and that I am not a whit older?”

“You are not altered, in fact,” said Rosas.  “I am mistaken—­”

“Yes, I know.  I have grown lovelier.  That is a compliment that I am used to—­Lissac has told me that already, only the other morning.”

She bit her lips almost imperceptibly, as if to blame herself for her imprudence, but had she mentioned Guy’s name designedly, she could not have been better satisfied with the result.  Monsieur de Rosas, usually very pale, became pallid, and a slight curl of his lip, although immediately suppressed, gave an upward turn to his reddish moustache.

“Ah!” he said, “You still see Guy.”

“I!—­I had not spoken a single word to him until I asked him to have an invitation sent me for this soiree, and then it was merely because I knew you would be here.”

“Ah!” said Jose again, without adding a word.

Marianne was satisfied.  She knew now that the duke still loved her, since the mention of Lissac’s name had made him tremble.  Well! she had shrewdly understood her Rosas.

“And what have you been doing, my dear duke, for such an age?” she said.

She looked at him as she had looked at Vaudrey, with her sweet and shrewd smile, which moved him profoundly, and her glance penetrated to the inmost depths of his being.

“You know the old saying:  ‘I have lived.’  It is great folly, perhaps, but it is the truth.”