The day after his conversation with Louise, Amedee felt that distressing impatience that waiting causes nervous people.  The day at the office seemed unending, and in order to escape solitude, at five o’clock he went to Maurice’s studio, where he had not been for fifteen days.  He found him alone, and the young artist also seemed preoccupied.  While Amedee congratulated him upon a study placed upon an easel, Maurice walked up and down the room with his hands in his pocket, and eyes upon the floor, making no reply to his friend’s compliments.  Suddenly he stopped and looking at Amedee said: 

“Have you seen the Gerard ladies during the past few days?”

Maurice had not spoken of these ladies for several months, and the poet was a trifle surprised.

“Yes,” he replied.  “Not later than yesterday I met Mademoiselle Louise.”

“And,” replied Maurice, in a hesitating manner, “were all the family well?”

“Yes.”

“Ah!” said the artist, in a strange voice, and he resumed his silent promenade.

Amedee always had a slightly unpleasant sensation when Maurice spoke the name of the Gerards, but this time the suspicious look and singular tone of the young painter, as he inquired about them, made the poet feel genuinely uneasy.  He was impressed, above all, by Maurice’s simple exclamation, “Ah!” which seemed to him to be enigmatical and mysterious.  But nonsense! all this was foolish; his friend’s questions were perfectly natural.

“Shall we pass the evening together, my dear Maurice?”

“It is impossible this evening,” replied Maurice, still continuing his walk.  “A duty—­I have an engagement.”

Amedee had the feeling that he had come at an unfortunate time, and discreetly took his departure.  Maurice had seemed indifferent and less cordial than usual.

“What is the matter with him?” said the poet to himself several times, while dining in the little restaurant in the Latin Quarter.  He afterward went to the Comedie Francaise, to kill time, as well as to inquire after his drama of Jocquelet, who played that evening in ’Le Legataire Universel’.

The comedian received him in his dressing-room, being already arrayed in Crispin’s long boots and black trousers.  He was seated in his shirt-sleeves be fore his toilet-table, and had just pasted over his smooth lips the bristling moustache of this traditional personage.  Without rising, or even saying “Good-day,” he cried out to the poet as he recognized him in the mirror.

“No news as to your piece!  The manager has not one moment to himself; we are getting ready for the revival of Camaraderie.  But we shall be through with it in two days, and then—­”