than she felt herself to be in peril.  When a man has been the lover of a woman as that man had been hers, with the vibrating communion of a voluptuousness unbroken for two years, that woman maintains a sort of physiological, quasi-animal instinct.  A gesture, the accent of a word, a sigh, a blush, a pallor, are signs for her that her intuition interprets with infallible certainty.  How and why is that instinct accompanied by absolute oblivion of former caresses?  It is a particular case of that insoluble and melancholy problem of the birth and death of love.  Madame Steno had no taste for reflection of that order.  Like all vigorous and simple creatures, she acknowledged and accepted it.  As on the previous day, she became aware that the presence of her former lover no longer touched in her being the chord which had rendered her so weak to him during twenty-five months, so indulgent to his slightest caprices.  It left her as cold as the marble of the bas-relief by Mino da Fiesole fitted into the wall just above the high chair upon which he leaned.

Boleslas, notwithstanding the paroxysm of lucid fury which he suffered at that moment, and which rendered him capable of the worst violence, had on his part a knowledge of the complete insensibility in which his presence left her.  He had seen her so often, in the course of their long liaison, arrive at their morning rendezvous at that hour, in similar toilettes, so fresh, so supple, so youthful in her maturity, so eager for kisses, tender and ardent.  She had now in her blue eyes, in her smile, in her entire person, some thing at once so gracious and so inaccessible, which gives to an abandoned lover the mad longing to strike, to murder, a woman who smiles at him with such a smile.  At the same time she was so beautiful in the morning light, subdued by the lowered blinds, that she inspired him with an equal desire to clasp her in his arms whether she would or no.  He had recognized, when she entered the room, the aroma of a preparation which she had used in her bath, and that trifle alone had aroused his passion far more than when the servant told him Madame Steno was engaged, and he wondered whether she was not alone with Maitland.  Those impassioned, but suppressed, feelings trembled in the accent of the very simple phrase with which he greeted her.  At certain moments, words are nothing; it is the tone in which they are uttered.  And to the Countess that of the young man was terrible.

“I am disturbing you?” he asked, bowing and barely touching with the tips of his fingers the hand she had extended to him on entering.  “Excuse me, I thought you alone.  Will you be pleased to name another time for the conversation which I take the liberty of demanding?”

“No, no,” she replied, not permitting him to finish his sentence.  “I was with Peppino Ardea, who will await me,” said she, gently.  “Moreover, you know I am in all things for the immediate.  When one has something to say, it should be said, one, two, three?....  First, there is not much to say, and then it is better said....  There is nothing that will sooner render difficult easy explanations and embroil the best of friends than delay and maintaining silence.”