“Ah! of old!” said the duke angrily.

She allowed her head to fall on the back of the divan; looking at this man as she well knew how, and insensibly creeping closer to him, she breathed in his ears these burning words: 

“Formerly, one who was your friend was beside me, is that not so?”

“Do not speak to me of him,” Jose said abruptly.

“On the contrary, I am determined to tell you that even if I had loved him, I should not have hesitated for a moment to leave him and follow you.  But I did not love him.”

“Marianne!”

“You won’t believe me?  I never loved him.  I have never been his mistress.”

“I do not ask your secret.  I do not speak of him,” said the duke, who had now become deadly pale.

“And I am determined to speak to you of him.  Never, you understand, never was Guy de Lissac my lover.  No, in spite of appearances; he has never even kissed my lips.  I thought I loved him, but before yielding, I had time to discover that I did not love him!  And I waited, I swear to you, expecting that you would say to me:  ‘I love you!’”

“I?”

“You,” said Marianne, in a feeble tone.  “You never guessed then?”

And she crept with an exquisitely undulating movement still closer to Rosas, who, as if drawn by some magnetic fluid, surrendered his face to this woman with the wandering eyes, half-open lips, from which a gentle sigh escaped and died away in the duke’s hair.

He said nothing, but hastily seizing Marianne’s hand, he drew her face close to his lips, her pink nostrils dilated as if the better to breathe the incense of love; and wild, distracted, intoxicated, he pressed his feverish, burning lips upon that fresh mouth that he felt exhaled the perfume of a flower that opens to the morning dew.

“I love you now, I loved you then!—­” Marianne said to him, after that kiss that paled his cheeks.

Rosas had risen:  a thunder of applause greeted the termination of a song in the other salon and the throng was pouring into the smaller salon.  Marianne saw Uncle Kayser, who was arguing with Ramel, whose kindly, lean face wore an expression of weariness.  She also rose, grasped the duke’s hands with a nervous pressure and said as she still gazed at him: 

“There is my uncle.  We shall see each other again, shall we not?”

She crushed Rosas with her electric glance.

Preceding the duke, she went straight to Kayser and took his arm, leaning on it as if to show that she was not alone, that she had a natural protector, and was not, as Rosas might have supposed, a girl without any position.

Kayser was almost astonished at the eagerness of his niece.

“Let us go!” she said to him.

“What! leave?  Why, there is to be a supper.”

“Well! we will sup at the studio,” she replied nervously.  “We will discuss the morality of art.”

She had now attained her end.  She realized that anything she might add would cool the impression already made on the duke.  She wished to leave him under the intoxication of that kiss.