The Prince went toward him with a languid smile.  He was no longer Nero, but Antinous.

“I invited Monsieur Dechartre to come to the Albertinelli palace,” said Miss Bell.  “I knew it would please you.  He wished to see your gallery.”

And it is true that Dechartre had wished to be there with Madame Martin.  Now all four walked among the Guidos and the Albanos.

Miss Bell babbled to the Prince—­her usual prattle about those old men and those Virgins whose blue mantles were agitated by an immovable tempest.  Dechartre, pale, enervated, approached Therese, and said to her, in a low tone: 

“This gallery is a warehouse where picture dealers of the entire world hang the things they can not sell.  And the Prince sells here things that Jews could not sell.”

He led her to a Holy Family exhibited on an easel draped with green velvet, and bearing on the border the name of Michael-Angelo.

“I have seen that Holy Family in the shops of picture-dealers of London, of Basle, and of Paris.  As they could not get the twenty-five louis that it is worth, they have commissioned the last of the Albertinellis to sell it for fifty thousand francs.”

The Prince, divining what they were saying, approached them gracefully.

“There is a copy of this picture almost everywhere.  I do not affirm that this is the original.  But it has always been in the family, and old inventories attribute it to Michael-Angelo.  That is all I can say about it.”

And the Prince turned toward Miss Bell, who was trying to find pictures by the pre-Raphaelites.

Dechartre felt uneasy.  Since the day before he had thought of Therese.  He had all night dreamed and yearned over her image.  He saw her again, delightful, but in another manner, and even more desirable than he had imagined in his insomnia; less visionary, of a more vivid piquancy, and also of a mind more mysteriously impenetrable.  She was sad; she seemed cold and indifferent.  He said to himself that he was nothing to her; that he was becoming importunate and ridiculous.  This irritated him.  He murmured bitterly in her ear:  “I have reflected.  I did not wish to come.  Why did I come?” She understood at once what he meant, that he feared her now, and that he was impatient, timid, and awkward.  It pleased her that he was thus, and she was grateful to him for the trouble and the desires he inspired in her.  Her heart throbbed faster.  But, affecting to understand that he regretted having disturbed himself to come and look at bad paintings, she replied that in truth this gallery was not interesting.  Already, under the terror of displeasing her, he felt reassured, and believed that, really indifferent, she had not perceived the accent nor the significance of what he had said.  He said “No, nothing interesting.”  The Prince, who had invited the two visitors to breakfast, asked their friend to remain with them.  Dechartre excused himself.  He was about to depart when,