“Will you walk with me?” she added.

He bowed and descended immediately.  At the moment he reached her: 

“It is suffocating,” she said.  “I wish to walk round the park and will take you with me.”

He muttered a few polite phrases, and they began walking, side by side, through the alleys of the park.

She moved at a rapid pace, with her majestic motion, her body swaying, her head erect.  One would have looked for a page behind her, but she had none, and her long blue robe—­she rarely wore short skirts—­trailed on the sand and over the dry leaves with the soft rustle of silk.

“I have disturbed you, probably?” she said, after a moment’s pause.  “What were you dreaming of up there?”

“Nothing—­only watching the coming storm.”

“Are you becoming poetical, cousin?”

“There is no necessity for becoming, for I already am infinitely so!”

“I do not think so.  Shall you leave to-morrow?”

“I shall.”

“Why so soon?”

“I have business elsewhere.”

“Very well.  But Vau—­Vautrot—­is he not there?”

Vautrot was the secretary of M. de Camors.

“Vautrot can not do everything,” he replied.

“By the way, I do not like your Vautrot.”

“Nor I. But he was recommended to me by my old friend, Madame d’Oilly, as a freethinker, and at the same time by my aunt, Madame de la Roche-Jugan, as a religious man!”

“How amusing!”

“Nevertheless,” said Camors, “he is intelligent and witty, and writes a fine hand.”

“And you?”

“How?  What of me?”

“Do you also write a good hand?”

“I will show you, whenever you wish!”

“Ah! and will you write to me?”

It is difficult to imagine the tone of supreme indifference and haughty persiflage with which the Marquise sustained this dialogue, without once slackening her pace, or glancing at her companion, or changing the proud and erect pose of her head.

“I will write you either prose or verse, as you wish,” said Camors.

“Ah! you know how to compose verses?”

“When I am inspired!”

“And when are you inspired?”

“Usually in the morning.”

“And we are now in the evening.  That is not complimentary to me.”

“But you, Madame, had no desire to inspire me, I think.”

“Why not, then?  I should be happy and proud to do so.  Do you know what I should like to put there?” and she stopped suddenly before a rustic bridge, which spanned a murmuring rivulet.

“I do not know!”

“You can not even guess?  I should like to put an artificial rock there.”

“Why not a natural one?  In your place I should put a natural one!”

“That is an idea,” said the Marquise, and walking on she crossed the bridge.

“But it really thunders.  I like to hear thunder in the country.  Do you?”