Monpavon, with solemn air and a great sense of his own importance, endeavoured to effect the presentation so long looked forward to; but his excellency, preoccupied, seemed not to hear, continued his progress towards the large drawing-room, borne along by one of those electric currents that break the social monotony.  On his passage, and while he greeted the handsome Mme. Jenkins, the ladies bent forward a little with seductive airs, a soft laugh, concerned to please.  But he noticed only one among them, Felicia, on her feet in the centre of a group of men, discussing some question as though she were in her studio, and watching the duke come towards her, while tranquilly taking her sherbet.  She greeted him with perfect naturalness.  Those near had discreetly retired to a little distance.  There seemed to exist between them, however, notwithstanding what de Gery had overheard with regard to their presumed relations, nothing more than a quite intellectual intimacy, a playful familiarity.

“I called at your house, mademoiselle, on my way to the Bois.”

“I was informed of it.  You even went into the studio.”

“And I saw the famous group—­my group.”

“Well?”

“It is very fine.  The hound runs as though he were mad.  The fox scampers away admirably.  Only I did not quite understand.  You had told me that it was our own story, yours and mine.”

“Ah, there!  Try.  It is an apologue that I read in—­You do not read Rabelais, M. le Duc?”

“My faith, no.  He is too coarse.”

“Ah, well, his works were the text-book of my first reading lessons.  Very badly brought up, you know.  Oh, exceedingly badly.  My apologue, then, is taken from Rabelais.  Here it is:  Bacchus created a wonderful fox, impossible to capture.  Vulcan, on the other hand, gave a dog of his own creation the power to catch every animal that he should pursue.  ‘Now,’ as my author has it, ‘it happened that the two met.’  You see what a wild and interminable chase.  It seems to me, my dear duke, that destiny has in the same way brought us together, endowed with conflicting attributes; you who have received from the gods the gift of reaching all hearts, I whose heart will never be made prisoner.”

She spoke these words, looking him full in the face, almost laughing, but sheathed and erect in the white tunic which seemed to defend her person against the liberties of his thought.  He, the conqueror, the irresistible, had never before met one of this audacious and headstrong breed.  He brought to bear upon her, therefore, all the magnetic currents of his seductiveness, while around them the rising murmur of the fete, the soft laughter, the rustle of satins and the rattling of pearls formed the accompaniment to this duet of mundane passion and juvenile irony.  He resumed after a minute’s pause: 

“But how did the gods escape from that awkward situation?”

“By turning the two runners into stone.”